


Shatterglass

by Myth979



Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Celaena is effectively three different characters at least, Characters will be added as they appear - Freeform, Multi, Reimagining, Rewrite, Writing Exercise, as will ships, but not in a multiple personality way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2018-10-23 18:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 26,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10725186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myth979/pseuds/Myth979
Summary: As a wrongly imprisoned shopgirl, Lillian can only wait to die. As an assassin, she has other options.(A Throne of Glass reimagining-as-writing-exercise)





	1. Chapter 1

Lillian was used to being woken abruptly – the cells they stuffed the inmates into were pitch black when the doors closed. After that, even the flickering torchlight when the guards arrived was enough to wake everyone in the room and make them squint, teary eyed.

From her place on the floor, Lillian climbed to her feet with the others, disoriented and dizzy, shackles clanking. She was almost sure this was not the usual work time.

“Just Sardothien,” one of the guards barked. Lillian blinked stupidly at him.

Another guard tapped his baton impatiently against the side of his leg, and free space appeared suddenly around her as the others huddled against walls, crowding each other even more to avoid the guards’ careless batons and heavy boots if she made them come for her. She’d made that mistake once.

It wasn’t that she was trying to be difficult. Sometimes she just had trouble responding to the name.

She walked out of the cell.

“Someone wants to see you,” the first guard told her as they marched her through the halls, even though she hadn’t asked. Lillian didn’t answer: silence was best unless she was asked a direct question. Sometimes it was best even then.

She didn’t know where she had expected them to take her, but it was not the overseer’s quarters. She was too busy smelling things other than blood, sweat, and waste (the lye the prisoners were required to scrub their cells and the hallways with never covered it entirely) to look around properly, but she did notice the immediate pleasant warmth. She had not been warm in a year. In Endovier, you were cold, or you were hot.

They stopped her at a door, where a quiet, cultured voice asked, “No one thought to clean her up first?”

Lillian shuddered, just once, with longing and dread both. Clean was a faraway dream, but being cleaned involved guards and groping hands and _notice_.

 “Nobody asked,” the talkative guard muttered, and after a short silence added, “My Lord.”

“Indeed,” the quiet voice said. “Too late now. Look at me.”

Lillian peeked up through matted hair, hoping he wasn’t talking to her. He was. Reluctantly she raised her head. Brown eyes met her blue ones.

“If you cause any trouble,” he said, “any at all, I will kill you. Do you understand?”

She nodded.

His eyes narrowed, but he nodded sharply. Two guards that she hadn’t noticed swung open the door, and the brown-eyed man led the way into the room.

“If you’re through threatening the assassin?” another cultured voice asked from inside, though his was considerably less quiet. The words were drawled, almost to the point of adding extra syllables, and she saw the man who spoke sprawled across a chair behind a desk. There was no other furniture in the room.

The man was not the overseer, who she knew by sight, and there was something familiar about him. He should not have been sitting in the overseer’s chair.

“Bow,” the brown-eyed man ordered.

Lillian bowed.

“Don’t tell me the mines have tamed her,” the familiar man said.

Lillian looked him over as unobtrusively as she could: pale, pale skin – paler than hers had been before the mines – and pitch black hair. Tall. His fingers drummed impatiently on the chair arm, making a ring catch the light of the lanterns.

“She gave little trouble after the first week, Your Highness,” the overseer said. “We expected more.”

Anger sparked, but she stomped it ruthlessly out. More trouble would have meant more beatings, less food, less water. She had stopped protesting after the second week, and lost her count of days sometime after the third. _His Highness_ and the overseer could expect whatever they wanted. She was obscurely glad she had not given it to them.

“Just like a criminal,” Dorian Haviliard, son of the King of Adarlan, said. “Tough when things are easy, but they fold under discipline.”

Lillian could not help but wonder how many criminals the prince had met, but she said nothing.

“Dear gods, no one cut out her tongue or anything as unpleasant as that?” the prince asked, still drawling. “Can you speak, assassin? Or do you have some code against it?”

Lillian shook her head.

“Answer the prince,” brown-eyes said.

She tried, but her voice emerged only as a croak. Clearing her throat, she tried again. “I have no code,” she said, voice hoarse with disuse.

“Your Highness,” brown-eyes said, and, when Lillian looked at him in confusion, nodded towards the prince.

“I have no code, Your Highness,” she said obediently.

The prince smiled. “How appropriate.”

When she did not answer, the prince leaned forward, letting his arms rest on his knees and knitting his fingers together. “I have an offer for you, Sardothien.”

Lillian glanced sideways, where brown-eyes was still watching her, and back at the prince. “An offer, Your Highness?”

Apparently taking her confusion as a cool request for more information, the prince clarified, “A choice. You can go back to your cell, keep mining until you die. You’ve done well here, lasted longer than most. How much longer will it take, do you think? Before you die of exhaustion, or a cut rots you from the inside out with infection? One misstep could mean death. These guards seem jumpy to me, though. It might not even be your misstep: guards can be so careless.”

He met her eyes, and his were a darker blue than hers. “No one cares if one more convict dies.”

She licked her lips, tasting salt from the mines and her own sweat. A tang of copper let her know that her lip had cracked again – she had stopped noticing the pinpricks of pain. “Or?”

He shrugged, still not looking away. “Or you work for me. Six years of service, assuming you survive.”

“Survive?” she asked.

“Obviously we must be sure you are qualified,” he said. “Not to mention the stakes. The only way you get out of here is if I have enough power to make it happen.”

There had to be a catch, aside from the obvious. That didn’t matter: anything was better than Endovier.

“Accepted,” she said.

“Celaena Sardothien,” he mused after a long moment, looking her up and down. “Not the negotiator I had expected.  Take her out then, Chaol, and get her cleaned up. The chains stay.”

She never was what people expected. The guards had expected more trouble; brown-eyes – Chaol – had expected her to be clean; the prince had expected negotiation, or maybe scorn.

It all boiled down to one thing: they expected Celaena Sardothien. It was unfortunate for everyone involved that Lillian wasn’t her.


	2. Chapter 2

Lillian Gordaina was born a shopkeeper’s daughter in Rifthold, the capital of Adarlan. Her father had been a soldier, lucky enough to come home from Adarlan’s perpetual wars bearing only a limp. He could not stand for long periods of time without a cane, so he usually sat behind the counter at their family’s little dress shop while her mother helped customers and restocked shelves.

Lillian was their only child: she wanted nothing more in life than to marry a nice boy and run the shop when her parents were too old for it. She was good at it; good at talking with the customers and laughing with them over the latest gossip and even better at finding just the right fabric to go with someone’s complexion while steering them gently to a cut that would flatter their build.

The shop had been doing well, in no small part due to Lillian’s gift with people, and her parents had been discussing hiring someone to help with the orders when the soldiers took Lillian off the street and tried and sentenced her for crimes she had not even known occurred. She had not even realized they were guards at first, which was why she had fought.

“No upstanding citizen fights like that,” the lieutenant in charge of her arrest testified. “I could see it in her eyes. She wanted us dead.”

No one asked if her father, a decorated soldier, had perhaps taught his wife and daughter basic self defense. No one had mentioned that a young woman alone in the streets of the capital might do her best to injure a group of unknown men who accosted her.

Now she knew not to struggle when guards shoved her into a room with a tub of water and a small pile of folded clothes, but she did turn quickly to make sure they left and closed the door behind them. They had, despite the prince’s orders, removed her chains for this, but she supposed it wouldn’t have made a difference either way.

Maybe Celaena Sardothien could have escaped a room with no windows and guards on the only door.

Lillian shook her head and climbed into the tub. The water was chilly but there was soap, and it was not the harsh stuff that made her itch. It even smelled a little of flowers. Most of her body cleaned up well enough, though the tub’s water was grey and grimy by the time she was done, with a film of something on the top that she didn’t want to think about. Her hair was another matter: she couldn’t work her fingers through it, and she hesitated to try and dunk it in the dirty water.

Someone knocked peremptorily on the door, waited a long moment, and let themselves in. Lillian leapt for the towel folded on the ground, sending the clothes tumbling, and yanked it around herself.

Chaol stopped just inside the door, eying her appraisingly. It took her a moment to realize he wasn’t ogling her, just taking in the state of her hair and then the bathwater.

“More water?” he asked.

Lillian blinked.

“We might have to cut that off,” he added, gesturing to his own hair. “It doesn’t look salvageable.”

“No,” she agreed slowly.

“You’ll understand, of course, if I don’t trust you with scissors or a knife.”

She had not planned to argue or do anything but nod and agree, but her fear had receded the tiniest bit in the face of being treated like a human being. “I don’t see why I would need scissors or a knife to kill someone.”

Immediately she flinched, horror struck, though she did not step back: trying to avoid punishment only made it worse when they eventually caught you.

He did not step forward or look discomfited. Instead, he laughed.

She blinked at him. It wasn’t unkind laughter. It did not have so much as an edge of mockery. He laughed as her mother had when she had made a particularly bad pun.

“I don’t imagine you would,” he agreed after he got ahold of himself. “All the same, appearances must be maintained – it’s my head on a pike if the king hears I let his son stay in a building with an armed assassin.”

“Oh,” she said, shifting her feet.

“I’ll have more water brought,” Chaol said, and left.

It took only one more tub or water once she decided that Chaol was right and her hair was a lost cause. She knotted it up on top of her head and let the guards cut it once she was dressed in the shirt and loose trousers that had been left for her. They were gentler than they had been when she had first been dragged here: then, they had shaved her head roughly, leaving nicks and cutting into the edge of her right ear. She’d gotten into the habit of rubbing the split as it healed, though she knew dirty fingers and open wounds were a recipe for disaster. She rubbed it now, reveling in the feel of clean skin and the absence of matted hair.

The guards escorted her to a small room with a bed, chair, and small window set high in the wall. A rug lay on the floor – it had seen better days, but after investigating the rest of the room she stood on it barefoot, clenching and unclenching her toes, until the guards delivered a small tray of food and left her alone again. She picked up the tray and sat on the rug – the chair had been alarmingly soft when she had tried it earlier.

Dinner was a bit of bread, soft and fresh, a small wedge of mild cheese, and some hearty broth. Lilian stared at it and tried not to cry. Someone had made sure to give her food her stomach would be able to handle with minimal trouble. Whether it was common sense or common decency didn’t matter: no one had thought of her except to check her quota in over a year. When she finished, she put it by the door and curled up on the carpet. From there she could see out the window, where the sky darkened gradually until it was dark entirely, stars pinpricks of light that seemed to spell out one thing.

You are out, they said. You are free.

Not yet, she told them, but she fell asleep anyway, lulled by a full stomach and novel warmth.

 


	3. Chapter 3

She woke with the dawn and, feeling a little braver, dragged the chair under the window so she could stand on it to watch the sun rise over the mountains. The other convicts were already in the mines, woken and walked out while it was still dark.

The sun had risen completely by the time her door opened, and she turned quickly to watch Chaol enter.

“I hope you weren’t trying to escape,” he said dryly. “Doubtless you know you wouldn’t get far with bare feet.”

She shook her head. She hadn’t known.

“Come on down. Breakfast is oatcakes and apples as we ride, but it’s food.” He eyed her wrinkled clothes as she obeyed and tossed a bundle of clothing on the bed. Boots followed. “Change into those first, and quickly. The boots should fit, but if they’re a bit large we can stuff the toes with something.”

She nodded. He left.

The boots did fit. The clothes were another matter. The shirt was too big across the chest, the tunic had been made for a smaller person, and the pants were too long, though those she could tuck into the boots. She was doing just that when Chaol returned, this time with a quick warning knock on the door.

“Well,” he said after surveying her. “It’ll do for now. Come on.”

He and the guards took her to the courtyard, where the prince stood chatting with the overseer. A joyful chorus of barks drowned out whatever they were saying as seven sleek hunting hounds piled over themselves to crowd around Chaol, tails whipping every which way. Lillian flinched away.

“ _Down_ ,” he said sternly. “Tabby, control your packmates, _down_.”

With a last whuff, the largest dog plopped her bottom on the ground, her tail still waving. The other six followed suit. They weren’t wearing leashes, so Lillian took a prudent step back, running into one of the guards. He himself took a hasty step back, hand on sword hilt, so she stopped.

“You don’t like dogs?” Chaol asked, fingers scratching Tabby’s head and watching Lillian carefully.

“I like reasonably sized dogs,” she replied. Tabby’s head was nearly level with Chaol’s hip. Another of the pack leaned close, nose twitching. Lillian eyed it warily.

“Blue,” Chaol said wearily. Blue promptly sat straight, as if it had been doing nothing. Lillian had no idea how Chaol could tell them apart – they all looked the same to her aside from Tabby.

“My dogs like you better than me,” the prince said. He had left the overseer and stood to the side, hands in the pockets of his coat. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

“They know quality when they see it,” Chaol said airily.

Yet another dog had edged carefully closer to Lillian without her noticing. It shoved its head under her hand, panting up at her in self-satisfied glee. Lillian froze.

“Glory,” Chaol snapped. Glory whined, ears flat against her head for a moment before perking them up again, nudging against Lillian’s hip.

Lillian carefully patted Glory’s head. The dog panted in satisfaction.

Chaol shook his head.

“Glory,” the prince called. Glory sighed and, with a quick lick to Lillian’s hand, went to her master.

Chaol passed over the promised food, which Lillian made herself eat slowly, and went to talk to the prince. The guards around Lillian watched carefully, hands on weapons: she found herself hunching her shoulders, clutching her food hard enough that an oatcake crumbled in her hands. She was a little more careful after that, keeping an eye on the guards and an eye on Chaol as she licked her fingers for the last sticky-sweetness of apple and the final crumbs of oatcake.

One of the guards tossed her a water flask. She fumbled the catch, but managed not to let it hit the dirt. Even their water was better than what she was used to.

“Finished?” Chaol asked. She did not startle, barely, but she closed the flask regretfully and held it out to him.

He waved it away. “Keep it. It’s a long ride until lunch. Can you mount up?”

The process took longer than it might have with the real Celaena Sardothien, who presumably knew how to ride. Lillian had been on horses before, but never often, and she had ridden pillion with one of her parents. She shifted uncomfortably. At least she didn’t have to worry about guiding the horse: Chaol had bound her hands together and one of the guards held the reins. She could drink from the flask that now hung from the pommel, but she didn’t think she could do much more. Maybe Celaena Sardothien could have.

“Move out,” Chaol ordered once everyone was mounted, dogs ranging back and forth and between the horses. Glory stuck close to Lillian’s bay as the company started off at a walk, easily avoiding the mare’s halfhearted kick and often glancing up as if keeping an eye on Lillian.

Lillian wondered uneasily how clever royal hounds really were, and whether one could be set to guard her. Though Glory didn’t seem inclined to violence at the moment – her tongue lolled from the side of her mouth, and she bounced more than walked – Lillian had seen those teeth. There were a lot of them, and all of them were large.

The dog remained beside her the entire morning, long enough that Lillian relaxed, but when Chaol called a halt and everyone dismounted for lunch Glory bounded off to the man setting out bowls of meat for the other dogs.

Lillian tried not to be saddened. Dogs liked food better than people usually anyway, right?

Lunch was bread and cheese and a refilled flask. She hadn’t protested when the guard took it from her, but when he handed it back, full and heavy, she had yanked it back too quickly. His hand went immediately to the hilt of his sword. She froze, dropping the flask.

After a long moment he knelt, eyes still on her, and picked up the flask, handing it back when he stood.

She took it slowly, managing a meek, “Thank you.”

The guard nodded and backed away.

When she looked up from her food again, Chaol was watching her with a frown. He looked away when he saw her notice, and she heard a quiet _whuff_.

Glory sat in front of her, eyes wide and pleading.

“I know they feed you,” Lillian hissed, but when the hound nudged her knee with a damp nose Lillian slipped her the last of the cheese. She was full anyway.

 


	4. Chapter 4

On the fifth night Lillian woke, certain that she was somehow late, that the guards were going to drag her out, maybe by her hair as they had the once, and throw her bodily into the mines. Her arm had broken when she had landed at the bottom of the shaft, and she knew she would have to work anyway unless she wanted to be useless. Useless people died, in Endovier.

Someone had hauled her to her feet and shoved a pickaxe into her left hand, her right arm dangling uselessly, and hissed, “ _Don’t let them see_.”

She hadn’t. She’d learned to work with her left hand and arm, and when her right arm had eventually healed thanks to hurried splinting and covert extra rations – just a tiny amount, but even that was a treasure in the mines – she could use both arms for nearly anything.

She was not in Endovier, she reminded herself, looking up at the stars, unable to move for long moment from sheer terror. She was out. She could feel a breeze on her face, and at her side slept Glory, who woke when Lillian buried her fingers into the dog’s fur.

Glory snuffled at her and licked her face before rolling over to sprawl once more. Lillian did not go back to sleep, but she did relax, muscle by muscle and moment by moment.

The rest of the weeks-long journey went much the same way: Lillian would wake at odd hours, convinced she was about to be in trouble, but Glory was inevitably there to slobber on her. Lillian got better at going back to sleep.

They stopped the last day, Rifthold in sight. It glinted in the distance, light from the setting sun sparking off the windows and glass-topped towers. Lillian watched it.

“A waste of money, if you ask me,” the prince said, making her flinch. She hadn’t heard him come up behind her, or the two guards that walked with him. She watched him carefully as he continued, “The windows are impractical for siege. And the servants are constantly having to take time to clean the glass.”

She said nothing – she knew better than the prince the cost of cleaning the glass. The outside of the windows had to be cleaned as well as the inside, and the servants had rigged a clever contraption they could raise and lower, made of a large board and rope. The problem was that ropes were breakable and accidents inevitable: Lillian’s neighbor had lost a brother when he had fallen from several stories up to the flagstones of the courtyard.

There was something in the prince’s tone, too, something like one of her more persistent suitors when she was still at the shop. Tenric had always talked at her about how terrible the lot of the injured veteran was without listening to her thoughts as the daughter of one of those injured veterans, and he had always expected her to be impressed that he cared.

Did Dorian Havilliard expect her to be impressed that he knew his windows had to be cleaned?

“Don’t you have questions?” he demanded when she still did not respond. “You haven’t even asked what you’re supposed to be doing.”

“I’ll do whatever you ask, your highness,” Lillian said.

“If you’re really broken this could end badly,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair.

It did not seem as if he was waiting for an answer, so she looked at the city.

Buildings sprawled on either side of the wide river, the sides shored up with stone that legend held was fae work. It certainly did not seem to have seams or need mortar, she knew from trips to the harbor mouth on free days with the teens her own age. She hadn’t had many close friends growing up, but most girls wanted to be on the good side of the relatively well-off shopkeepers’ daughter who would tailor hand-me-downs or add some embroidery around collars or wrists for next-to-nothing. Lillian had had many suitors too – she was her parents’ only child, and her skill and the shop’s reputation guaranteed a steady income.

It helped that she had been pretty, she knew. It hadn’t been something she’d thought about often – or at least, she hadn’t _thought_ she thought about it often – until the mines, when her hands roughed and formed callouses larger and rougher than those required for needlework, and her blonde curls had been chopped off and she could count her ribs. She’d caught herself worrying about those things sometimes, as if the hair or her soft hands were irreplaceable, before she’d reminded herself that the callouses made work easier and the hair was inconsequential to living.

She could maybe think about those things again, now that she was out. If what the prince wanted from her wasn’t too frightful.

“There’s a competition, of sorts,” the prince said. “I need you to win it.”

The only competition she would win in was how quickly she could turn out a dress, and she wasn’t sure of that after the mines. Maybe she could win a salt-mining contest.

Glory trotted up with a quiet _woof_ and licked her hand. Lillian gripped her ruff so she had the courage to say, “What sort of competition?”

The prince eyed his dog narrowly, but Glory only thumped her tail twice on the ground and nuzzled Lillian’s hip.

“The sort that weeds out incompetents,” he said.

She hoped he was prepared to be disappointed quickly. Maybe something of that thought showed on her face.

“I don’t expect you to be in perfect shape immediately. We’re here early – there will be time for you to get at least a little bit of your prowess back.”

“You took me out of the mines for a game?” she asked, gripping Glory’s ruff a little more tightly. She could not decide if she was angry or scared or only resigned: of course the prince of Adarlan would take someone he thought to be a notorious assassin from her prison for a _game_.

“My father in his infinite wisdom,” the prince said, and she was not sure if she imagined the hint of sarcasm there, “has decided to make the heirship a competition. My brother and cousins have a sudden taste of what it could mean to have real power, and they want to keep it.”

What parent would force their children to fight? Lillian thought. But then, of course the prince and his royal family wouldn’t fight it out themselves. Of course they would have proxies.

“I am your only hope at staying out of those mines, Sardothien,” he continued. “Only if I win will I have the power necessary to do it.”

“And you chose me,” Lillian said, choking back laughter. She wasn’t entirely successful, if the look on the prince’s face was anything to judge by. Still. “ _Me_.”

“I chose the greatest assassin I’ve ever heard of,” he said.

Lillian couldn’t help it – the laugh she let loose was hoarse and loud. She was out of practice. “It seems to me that an assassin you’ve heard of is a poor assassin.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe I’m just looking for a killer.”

Glory whined at Lillian’s too-tight grip. She let go immediately and petted the dog in apology.

It made sense to choose an assassin to kill people. She hadn’t wondered or cared, because it was a way out, but now she knew. The worst Lillian had ever done to anyone was shoving a too-persistent swain into a horse trough. Could she kill someone, if it meant she never had to mine salt again? Could she kill someone if it meant never setting foot in Endovier again?

She would do anything to stay out of Endovier, she decided. Even if she didn’t win, she could find other ways. If she died in the contest she wouldn’t even have to worry about it.

Lillian realized that while she would do anything not to go back to Endovier, she might do the same to continue living.

“I can be your killer,” she said.


	5. Chapter 5

The next morning they rode into the city, bypassing the newer cobblestone roads in favor of the seamless white pavement that made up the four main thoroughfares leading to the castle.

“Only Terrasen has more faestone,” Chaol said. He rode beside her, holding the lead line of her horse. Her hands weren’t tied now, but she had no intention of running – even if she could get away, where would she go?

“Has?” she asked, surprised. Her father had been wounded in the Terrasen conquest. He had always said that the armies took what they could and razed what they couldn’t.

“So those demon-queens couldn’t use it against us again,” Tenric had said knowingly, but her father hadn’t answered.

“You can’t destroy faestone,” Chaol said now. “Or anyway we can’t, and apparently not even the Terrasen nobility could. We lost an entire troop to their fire once, and the stone wasn’t even warm when somebody finally got him with an arrow.”

Lillian frowned. The Terrasen conquest had only started a little over a decade ago, and ended only two years later when the King of Adarlan saved them all by confining magic. She had been eight at the beginning, and Chaol couldn’t be that much older than her, could he? She knew for a fact that the prince wasn’t.

“My father is General Westfall,” Chaol said, catching her expression. “He was in charge of the occupation.”

“He isn’t now?” she asked as they approached one of the river bridges. As one of the four that led to the castle in the river, it too was made of faestone except for the railings, which were beautifully carved but ordinary stone.

“He’s whatever the king asks him to be,” Chaol replied.

As they rode over the bridge and into a courtyard, Lillian wondered if Chaol was whatever the prince asked him to be. It seemed like it – how else could someone her age be a captain of the royal guard?

Then again, Celaena Sardothien was supposedly Lillian’s age, and she was an assassin. The prince certainly had high expectations of her.

“You’ll be left hand in the contest,” he had told her. “I’ll have trials of kingship and wisdom and such, but your job - along with whatever trials my royal father sets you - is to make sure anyone too troublesome just… doesn’t compete.”

It felt like a job for someone the prince trusted more than an assassin he’d never met before. Maybe he didn’t have anyone else he trusted besides Chaol, who had already said, with a pointed look, that he was the prince’s right hand and in charge of his safety. She supposed he could be relying on sheer skill, with no idea that Lillian’s skills lay elsewhere.

“You can’t make it obvious,” the prince had continued. “Though I’m sure you know that already.”

It _did_ seem to come hand-in-hand with the job title.

“We can’t make you obvious either,” he had mused. “Those involved will suspect, of course. But in the meantime, I suppose with enough food, and when your hair grows out, you’re pretty enough to believably be my mistress.”

Chaol had looked as if he had wanted to sigh.

Lillian had said carefully, “As a pretense?”

“I’m not quite stupid enough to allow an assassin into my bed even if I thought you were interested,” the prince had said dryly. “My mother, as the saying goes, did not raise a complete fool. What am I to call you? I can’t go around calling you Celaena.”

“Lillian,” Lillian said without thinking too much about it. She could hear her name again.

So Lillian let Chaol lift her down from the horse. The prince had wanted to, for verisimilitude, but Chaol had put his foot down: No assassins in the prince’s arms. Maybe later - _maybe -_ if she had proven herself unlikely to murder him, they might be allowed to hold hands in public.

“Shouldn’t you be with the prince?” she asked as Chaol hustled her through a small side door and down a hallway.

“He has actual guards,” Chaol said. “I wasn’t strictly speaking ever trained as a bodyguard. Which does not mean I can’t kill you, understand.”

Someday someone telling her they could kill her would be less terrifying. It wasn’t today. Lillian went meekly.

They emerged through another small, unassuming door into a larger hall, and from there into a set of rooms where windows overlooked the rivermouth and the ocean, ships bobbing along in miniature. The view was only slightly distorted by the panes of glass.

The Glass Castle hadn’t gotten its byname until magic had vanished. Before then, leftover enchantments had kept out bugs and high winds without a need for actual barriers. When the king had chained magic in his last successful attempt to save them all from Terrasen’s demon-queens, those enchantments had vanished. The king had commissioned glass to fill the gaps. It would have been an expensive endeavor even if he had meant the tiny, boxy panes shopkeepers kept to show off their wares.

The king did not want tiny square panes. He wanted to replicate what his palace had before without the aid of magic. It had taken five years and all the glassworkers in the city, but he had, in some places, succeeded: the throne room was said to have a single large pane of glass fitted to each arch, where the king could have an uninterrupted view of his ever-expanding kingdom in all directions.

In others he had settled for panes that were not quite perfect, but still works of art in themselves. This room had doors fitted into the panes so that they were ignorable if not invisible. The doors led to a small balcony overlooking another courtyard set into the side of the castle itself, with potted trees and small planters of pretty flowers, graceful human-carved railings whitewashed to keep the color the same as the faestone.

“Don’t bother with the door,” Chaol said. It tore her away from the view, and finally she noticed the room itself. Chaol leaned against the doorframe, watching her carefully. “It’s locked and barricaded from the other side.”

He gestured to one of three interior doors that she should probably start noticing if she was supposed to kill people for the prince or avoid being killed for the prince. The one Chaol pointed out seemed to be a connecting door, at which point she realized that as the prince’s mistress she had been given a suite attached to his.

Was the prince so sure of Celaena Sardothien’s cooperation, or had it been observing Lillian during the trip that made him feel safe enough to put someone he thought was a deadly assassin only a door away?

“I have no intention of visiting the prince’s bedchamber,” she told Chaol.

“Interesting words for his mistress,” a woman said, and Lillian spun, eyes wide, to see a woman standing in one of the other doorways.

She wore palace livery like a second skin, even though her red hair clashed with the red panels on her black dress. She had a little bit of embroidery around her hem and collar, which Lillian knew meant the woman was of relative importance in palace servant hierarchy. Ladies’ maids and valets got embroidery: chambermaids and footmen made do with the red panels alone. Only the guards wore stark black under their gold wyvern-embroidered surcoats.

“Phillipa,” Chaol sighed.

“Don’t ‘Phillipa’ me,” Phillipa said. “I had no idea I could sneak up on a trained assassin and a captain of the guard.”

“You hardly snuck up -” Chaol began, but stopped and shook his head.

On second look, Phillipa was older than Lillian had thought her, dabs of cosmetics placed strategically, presumably to hide wrinkles, and her red hair was just a touch brighter than Lillian had seen occur naturally. When she smiled, as she did now at Chaol, she was even more beautiful.

Lillian would have dressed her differently, though. Maybe in a deep green, to properly show off the red hair and green eyes, and the dress should have been cut to her figure, not boxy. The effect was to make the dress look three sizes too large and as if it was trying to hide the Phillipa’s round stomach. Lillian’s hands itched for needle and thread and measuring tools and maybe a drawing pad. She could have dressed Phillipa magnificently two and a half years ago.

“Phillipa will be your ladies maid,” Chaol said, turning back to Lillian. “If you hurt her, the contract is null and void.”

“She won’t want to hurt me,” Phillipa said as she came forward, crossing her arms. “I’m sure even assassins know that ladies maids are more useful alive and helpful than any other way.”

Lillian nodded quickly.

“The other girls will be in later,” Phillipa continued, looking Lillian up and down. “If you don’t mind me saying so, my lady, you look like you could use a bath.”

It would probably be impolite to ask for food first, but she needn’t have bothered. Phillipa was already ordering Chaol off to have the kitchens send up a snack. She stopped short of actually pinching Lillian’s arm, but had many things to say on the subject of her clear lack of nutrition.

“Most of what we have for you to wear are castoffs,” Phillipa said, stripping Lillain efficiently and before she could lodge a protest, “But I’m a fair hand with a needle and so are some of the other girls. We’ll get you suitably kitted up for now, and Dorian can decide whether or not you need more fashionable things later.”

“I can sew,” Lillian managed as Phillipa herded her into another room and a large tub. It wasn’t quite hot, but it was still warm and lovely. Lillian smelled roses.

“We’ll see,” Phillipa replied, as if humoring her. “Don’t worry about your hair, wigs have been all the rage since Lady Kaltain arrived at court. I’ll just get your robe set out. I don’t think I need to mention not to run?”

She left before Lillian could reply. Lillian waited a long moment to see if she would come bustling back, but when the door stayed closed she sank neck-deep in the water and wrapped her arms around herself.

So she’d have to try and kill some people, she thought. So she’d probably die in the attempt. At least for now she was warm, and food was on its way.

She dunked her head under the water and scrubbed vigorously.


	6. Chapter 6

By the time Philippa returned, Lillian had washed and was dozing in the warm water. The rose scent had not been from the soap or the water, but the window that opened onto the same rose garden as the small balcony. Salt air and roses.

The soap smelled of lilies. Did the prince’s soap smell of lilies? Did Chaol’s? Were the soaps chosen on an individual basis or -

“Your food has arrived,” Philippa said, which stopped Lillian wondering about soap immediately. Phillipa held out a towel and Lillian, remembering how the guard had reacted to her snatching the flask, took it carefully.

Philippa gave her a critical once-over as she dried off. “Something high-necked,” she decided. “And gloves. Definitely gloves.”

Lillian looked down at her hands, covered in calluses and  tiny scars that had more often than not turned purple instead of staying pale, and winced.

“Also lotion,” Philippa said, and reached out.

Lillian froze when Philippa took her hands. The towel fell to the floor, but it was a secondary consideration as Philippa felt over the scars and bumps and frowned over the wonky fingers on Lillian’s left hand. The pinky was twisted just enough to be noticeable, a legacy of a guard’s incautious boot during a wake up. Her thumb didn’t look worse, but on careful examination it didn’t close quite right. It hadn’t affected her grip on anything as large as a pick-axe handle, but she didn’t think she could sew with it. She supposed she hadn’t ever sewn with her left hand anyway.

That one had been on purpose, when she’d fallen and stayed down too long for another guard’s liking and then not made enough noise when he’d kicked her.

“I guess I didn’t hit hard enough,” he’d said, and ground his bootheel into her hand. She had made sure to make noise that time.

Philippa didn’t ask, though, so Lillian didn’t say.

“I’ve a salve for these,” Philippa said at last. “It won’t put the fingers back where they should be, but it will help the ache.”

“Thank you,” Lillian said, pulling her hands back. She made sure to do it slowly. She hadn’t noticed the ache in her hands until recently, when she had noticed that sometimes, in warm water or wrapped in Glory’s fur, they _didn’t_ ache.

Philippa hmmphed and took a long robe from her shoulder. “Here, or you’ll catch your death.”

Lillian slid it on, Phillipa tied it firmly around her waist, and she went to eat.

 

* * *

 

 

“Philippa is Dorian’s old nurse,” Chaol told her later. “She’s the only one still alive.”

They were in an unused room on the same hall, though on the other side. This room opened onto another balcony over an inner courtyard: the castle was full of them, as if whoever had built it couldn’t bear to have even one room without a window. They must not have had a problem with thieves, Lillian thought.

Lillian had asked about Philippa to put off the inevitable. She hadn’t done any kind of exercises in her years at Endovier aside from repeated mining, and she hadn’t held even her staff long before that. She’d been focused on the shop and the customers.

There were no staffs in the room. On one wall hung swords and knives. On the other was another masterful glass creation, this one a mirror. It wasn’t quite as flawless as a smaller hand mirror would be, and her face stretched a little when she looked into it, but it was smooth and silvery and would probably be an excellent tool for telling if her own position was correct.

Lillian had never used a sword: as a common civilian it was illegal for her to possess one. Her father’s had been collected with his service uniform. He had said many of the forms were similar, but she’d never had occasion to test it even when she had been using the staff he and her mother had drilled her in until her early teens. Maybe Chaol would let her have a pickaxe.

As if he could sense her mind wandering, or maybe just notice that she was looking elsewhere, Chaol continued, “She killed the other two.”

His tone said it was perfectly normal information to disclose.

Lillian, instead of asking how or why, managed, “Um?”

“The former Duke Perrington wanted his nephew to inherit,” Chaol said. “The nurses were in his pay. I believe Philippa smothered one of them with a pillow when she found poison in Dorian’s food.”

The former Duke Perrington would have been the brother of the king’s second wife, Lillian realized. Dorian would have been six or seven if the incident had happened around when his younger brother was born. She’d known the duke was executed for treason, but she hadn’t known what that treason had been. It hadn’t been much of surprise when the then-queen Adeline had set herself aside and joined the maidens of Deanna, leaving the dukedom to her infant son with the king as his regent. The Terrasen conquest had begun a year later, and four years after that the king had married his third wife, Georgina.

Georgina had been clearly pregnant when Lillian stood trial, and just as clearly distressed to be there. Maybe she had been right to be: Lillian had learned on the journey that the queen had given birth to twins three months after the trial, but the boy had been stillborn. Princess Gwyneth had been born screaming and healthy, though.

Lillian wondered if Gwyneth had nurses as loyal as Philippa.

“Philippa will do her best to make sure you aren’t murdered before you can do your job,” Chaol continued. “Now let’s get you back into shape. I assume you have exercises. Let’s see what you can do.”

She grit her teeth and began her half-remembered routines.

 

* * *

 

 

Two hours of constant critique later, Lillian was ready to start her murder spree. Her first victim would be Chaol, she thought as she trudged back to her rooms. It would end badly, but he wouldn’t be ordering her to fix her feet or adjust her arm anymore.

“How did you do so much with so little technique?” he demanded at one point, while Lillian was trying and failing to get him into a headlock.

Lillian didn’t answer, of course, because her answer would have been ‘I did nothing you think that I did and also I have spent two and a half years in a salt mine.’

He had sighed as if deeply put upon and dragged her through the exercises again.

Now she pushed her door open to see Philippa and three much younger women in the black dresses with red panels of chambermaids. For a heartstopping moment Lillian thought the one on the end was Marla from the bakery a block down from her parent’s shop, but on second glance she was too young. Fourteen, maybe.

She hadn’t considered that she might be recognized. She would deal with that worry later, she supposed. She couldn’t do anything about it now.

“Your other maids,” Philippa said with a small curtsey, adding a quick but belated, “My lady.”

The maids exchanged quick glances before looking down at their feet.

“Of course,” Lillian replied, nodding as she had seen Chaol do at some of his lieutenants on the way here. “I’m Lillian.”

“Lady Lillian would rather not be bothered, girls, so we’ll come in when she’s out,” Philippa said.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Lillian said quickly. “Whenever’s most convenient, I can get out of the way or just wait on the balcony or…”

She trailed off when the maids started exchanging more glances and Philippa shot her a quick admonishing look.

“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling helpless as the silence grew. “I don’t even know your names.”

“Elaine, my lady,” the first girl, tall and thin with stick-straight brown hair, said before Philippa could. She was nearly as pale as the prince.  “This is Gytha and Sara.”

Gytha also had brown hair, but hers was curly, bits of it popping loose from the severe buns all three wore. Sara was the young one who Lillian had thought to be Marla,  with the same black hair of Lillian’s old neighbor but a much smaller nose and a rounder chin.

“Gytha, draw the lady a bath,” Philippa ordered. “Sara, run to the kitchens. Lady Lillian will want fruit after all of her exertions. Elaine, you will ready an appropriate gown for a quiet dinner. I want it ready when Lady Lillian is done.”

“Thank you,” Lillian managed as Philippa hurried her into the bathing room and behind a screen. Gytha opened a cabinet on the wall and began attaching a sort of hose to a contraption inside.

“How does that work?” Lillian asked.

“There’s always someone heating water in the room above,” Philippa said tightly, yanking off the tunic. Lillian wasn’t sure why she was upset, but she ducked her head and fell silent anyway.


	7. Chapter 7

The gown they put her in fit well enough, even if it was a little loose. It had been the height of fashion two and a half years ago, when Lillian had been sent to the mines, which meant it was out of fashion now. Queen Georgina’s fondness for frequent new styles had been something Lillian and her family celebrated: more nobles needing more clothes meant more business.

High necks had been out of fashion longer than Lillian had been in Endovier, though. Philippa, Elaine, Gytha, and Sara had contrived a lacy insert that hid Lillian’s chest and neck nearly to her chin.

“Oh,” Gytha said when they had finished. Sara bit her lip and Philippa sighed, but Elaine looked smug.

She had a right to be, if the lace had been her idea. It didn’t look at all like Lillian was trying to cover anything up: if anything, it looked as if Lillian was trying to get people to look closer. The lace was more a wink and a nudge at modesty. You couldn’t see anything, not really, but it looked as if you should  _ try _ .

Lillian nodded as she examined herself in the mirror. “I think it will go well with a corset, for the shape,” she said, shifting for a side view. “And I like the color.”

The soft blue-green let her coloring stand out, lending her eyes a greenish cast and heightening the little bit of color she’d gotten from riding for three weeks without a hat. Her hair was still a short cap of tight curls, but a wig would cover that. On closer inspection, though, she almost wished she wouldn’t have to wear a wig. The shorter style flattered her face.

Elaine grinned at her in the mirror. “Maybe you’ll start a new fashion, my lady.”

“Maybe,” Lillian said, unconvinced. Prince’s mistresses could and did start fashions, she knew - the king’s mistress had often set them, during Dorian’s mother’s time, but Queen Leanne hadn’t had any inclination towards running a court with any frivolities. Maybe if she had, she’d have had more allies when the King had tried and executed her for treason.

Queen Leanne had been from Terrasen, though. She might not have had any allies anyway.

Two thirds of the king’s wives had been treasonous, or at least treason-adjacent, Lillian realized. That seemed like a great deal of bad luck for one person. Maybe there was a reason Queen Georgina had always busied herself with court frivolites almost exclusively.

So it made sense that the king would occupy himself with mistresses, and it made sense that sometimes they would be influential enough to set trends, but with Queen Georgina’s iron grip on court fashion and comportment, one that had lasted as long as Lillian had been making dresses, Lillian doubted she had a chance. She was surprised this Lady Kaltain that Philippa had mentioned earlier rated a mention.

“If anyone is going to set a new fashion, it’s Princess Nehemia,” Gytha said, as if someone had argued with her.

Nehemia was an Eyllwean name, after a legendary peacemaker: Lillian’s aunt had it as a middle name, and Lillian’s great-grandmother had had it as a first name. What was an Eyllwean princess doing at the court of the king of Adarlan? Just before her arrest the king of Eyllwe had knuckled under the pressure of Adarlan’s armies and become a tributary, making Adarlanian families like Lillian’s, with a little Eyllwean blood, step lightly. To Lillian’s knowledge, though, none of the Eyllwean royal family had come directly to deal with it, instead meeting somewhere on the border. It was possible she just hadn’t known, for most of her palace news came through her customers’ gossip: they might have missed things, or might not have cared enough to mention an Eyllwean princess.

But she would have heard if Princess Nehemia had been at all fashionable, at the time.

“No offense intended, my lady,” Gytha added, and Lillian realized she had been quiet for too long.

“None taken, Gytha,” she said. “Does Princess Nehemia wear very different clothes?”

Her visit to her mother’s family in Eyllwe, before the Terrasen conquest and the resulting constant wars, had not showed very different clothing, but her mother’s family lived near the border, and anyway nobles often wore different clothing than commoners - especially commoners who farmed and scorned cities.

“Her dresses look like they wrap around her, mostly,” Gytha said. “They’re the most beautiful colors.”

“You’ll be wanted at dinner in a moment,” Philippa said briskly, before Lillian could ask for more details. “I’ll take you in.”

* * *

 

 

Dinner was not the large affair Lillian had braced herself for. Two guards stood outside the doors of the small, private dining room just down the hall, letting Philippa in without a word and eyeing Lillian only a little more warily.

Inside, a table took up most of the space. Food was already laid out, and the prince sat between Chaol and a pale young woman  with heavy-lidded eyes. Two chairs stood empty. Philippa took one. Lillian hesitated only briefly before taking the other. The new woman fixed her eyes on Lillian and kept them there.

“Chaol tells me you’re more out of shape than expected,” the prince said.

“She’s nothing but skin and bones, Dorian,” Philippa said. “You can’t expect her to be ready right away.”

“I don’t,” the prince said calmly. “I’m only commenting.”

Philippa huffed. The prince sighed. 

“Yes?”

“She’s meek as a mouse,” Philippa told him as if Lillian wasn’t sitting right there nibbling on a piece of cheese. “She isn’t faking it, I don’t think. If you have Chaol or Nesryn beat her up every day she won’t get healthier any time soon, and she won’t take initiative either. If she dies or doesn’t do anything she’s of no use to you.”

Lillian couldn’t disagree, even if she wasn’t sure she’d be of use to the prince when she wasn’t tired and not quite starved any longer. She took another bite of cheese. It had nuts and herbs in it, and she chewed slowly to savor it. The woman she assumed to be Nesryn kept watching her.

“She isn’t your charge, Philippa,” the prince said. “You just need to make sure nobody else kills her.”

“You made her my charge, and I  _ am _ making sure nobody else kills her,” Philippa retorted.

Lillian thought she heard Chaol mutter, “I told you so.” The corner of Nesryn’s mouth twitched.

“I don’t mind practicing,” Lillian said. She had to say so, didn’t she, to stay out of Endovier?

Chaol snorted.

The prince shot a sideways glance at him. “Philippa, she’s an assassin.”

It was Philippa’s turn to snort.

“You aren’t an assassin,” the prince said irritably. “You are an assassin  _ deterrent _ .”

Lillian was of the opinion that Philippa could murder people by telling them to lay down and die, and that the prince might be better served by making  _ her  _ his left hand, but she also wanted to finish the cheese and start on the chicken. She took a sip of water.

“Whatever you say, your highness,” Philippa murmured, tone suddenly modulated into a sweet and quiet register, eyes coyly averted.

The prince grumbled and rubbed his forehead. “Dammit, Philippa. Fine. What do you suggest?”

She didn’t waste time gloating. “Give her some time to acclimate. Let her lean the court. Build some muscle.”

“So she can murder us all better?”

Lillian took another bite of the cheese and looked up to meet Nesryn’s eyes. The other woman cocked her head and frowned at whatever she saw.

“Do you want her to murder people at all?” Philippa asked. “She’s been nearly three years away. She won’t be able to pretend to be your mistress if you always have her hidden - at least not after the first couple of weeks.”

Lillian finished the cheese and sat back, folding her hands in her lap.

“Philippa,” the prince sighed, but he sounded defeated already.

“She’ll need a few more fashionable dresses,” Philippa said, and Lillian perked up. She liked what she was in now, but what  _ were _ the current fashions?

Nesryn frowned more. Lillian ducked her head.

“We’re already calling her Lady Lillian,” Philippa continued. “She may as well look the part.”

The prince sighed again. “Fine, Philippa. You probably know best.”

Philippa didn’t have the decency to be smug. Instead, she carved the chicken. Lillian dug in.

* * *

 

 

Philippa sent Gytha, Sara, and Elaine to bed early. None of them slept in the little maid’s chamber off of Lillian’s bedroom, so Philippa and Lillian were alone when Philippa helped her out of her dress.

Philippa was gentler than earlier, so Lillian dared ask, “Who is Nesryn?”

“One of Chaol’s people,” Philippa said. “Raise your arms.”

“She doesn’t look…” Lillian trailed off as she obeyed.

“She’s loyal,” Philippa snapped. “It doesn’t matter where she’s from.”

Lillian subsided, letting Philippa move her where she wanted.

Finally, Philippa relented. “She’s from the southern continent. I don’t know where, specifically. Ask her yourself.”

Lillian nodded, but she snatched the dress back when Philippa nearly crumpled it up. “That will wrinkle the silk!”

“It’s on its third hand-me-down,” Philippa said. “It’s off for scraps and panels anyway.”

Elaine had been so excited about it, though, and she had worked it up for Lillian. “May I keep this one?” she asked.

The look Philippa gave her made her shrink, but she kept the dress in her hands. Someone had  _ made _ it for her. 

“I suppose,” the woman said slowly. “It isn’t as if anyone will miss it.”

Lillian nodded too quickly and moved slowly to the wardrobe, hanging the dress with all the care she would have - and had - given a duchess’ ballgown.

“I mean what I said at dinner,” Philippa told her, watching her curiously. “You’re a little broken bird. And you aren’t  _ angry _ enough.”

“People are scared when I’m angry,” Lillian told the dress, smoothing the sleeves with more care than even a duchess’ ballgown would have warranted. The mirror in the back of the wardrobe was hardly blocked at all: she had filled out a little since the prince had taken her from Endovier, but the candlelight threw the hollows of her cheeks and eye sockets into stark relief and made the deep, dark purple bags under her eyes look even darker and deeper. She wasn’t sure those bags would ever go away.

“Maybe,” Philippa said. “I’m scared that you aren’t. What kind of person lives like you do, and then lives through what you did, and isn’t angry?”

A tired one, Lillian thought. A tired little broken bird, that was what she was, apparently.

Philippa pulled her away from the wardrobe and tugged a nightshirt over her head, nudging Lillian to the bed. The sheets had already been pulled down, and Lillian let Philippa pull them over her. There was a glass of water on the bedside table.

Philippa patted Lillian’s covered feet a little awkwardly and left without saying goodnight, closing the door behind her and taking the candle.

Lillian’s breath caught when the door closed, leaving her in the dark, and she reached reflexively for Glory.

Glory, of course, wasn’t there. She was down in the kennels, no doubt charming extra food from the handlers.

No Glory, and no campfire. There were probably candles somewhere in the room, but Lillian couldn’t make herself leave the bed. It didn’t matter that she was the only person there, and it didn’t matter that she was warm or that the bed was soft and smelled clean, or that the salt air and roses breeze still circled the room through whatever means. Lillian curled up into a ball, like she used to do in Endovier, and she cried.


	8. Chapter 8

Philippa woke her the next morning. Lillian’s face itched, her eyes were swollen, and her mouth tasted terrible. She probably looked terrible too: Lillian was one of those people whose face went blotchy when she cried, and she had cried for some time last night. Philippa said nothing about it, but she made sure Lillian drank another glass of water before she  lead Lillian to the bathing room.

“Fittings today,” Philippa said. “Close your eyes.”

Lillian obeyed. Philippa laid a cool cloth over her eyes - she flinched away at the first touch, surprised. The bath water was warm.

“Cool water will help with the swelling,” Philippa said, so Lillian made herself stay still, and Philippa left her to soak for another few minutes.

She came back to announce breakfast, so Lillian climbed into her robe once more and sat at the tiny table near the window and ate the fruit and oatmeal.

Philippa gave her no further instructions when the meal was cleared away, Lillian continued to sit. The ships in the bay bobbed like toys from here, and the waves they rode were a deep blue that Lillian had seen many nobles try to find for their finery. No dyer had ever gotten it quite right so far as she knew. 

She would rather look out over the city. Maybe she could pick out her old street, her parents’ shop, the bakery at the corner…

She had a pretty courtyard and waves and ships, and she was clean and dry and fed and didn’t have to mine salt. Lillian tried not to feel guilty for wanting more, or less, or different or  _ whatever. _

She felt considerably less guilty two hours later, when she had been left alone to prowl her suite with no instructions or real clothes. Philippa had mentioned fittings. Lillian knew they took time to arrange, but surely they had never taken this long to arrange when she was on the other end. She would almost welcome another session with Chaol.

When Philippa finally returned, Lillian was considering pulling on the folded practice clothes she found in the wardrobe and looking for Chaol herself. She knew she wouldn’t do it, actually - the clothes, yes. Looking for Chaol, a man who had on multiple occasions threatened to kill her? He was probably in the Prince’s rooms, making sure the connecting door was adequately blockaded. She would not leave her rooms without instructions for anything short of fire, and she knew it.

“The dressmaker is here,” Philippa said from the doorway. Lillian turned, feeling guilty once again, though she couldn’t say why.

Lillian didn’t recognize the woman who waited for them in the main room, which was a relief. What would she do if someone she knew turned up at the palace? Beg them to be quiet?

Did she want them to be quiet? Surely if the prince knew she wasn’t Celaena Sardothien, he would let her go - or he would throw her back into Endovier for lying to him.

She stayed quiet while the woman measured her, Elaine watching closely. Lillian wanted to tell her not to bother - Elaine had made up a used dress to Lillian’s size after helping her dress once. Elaine didn’t need to learn anything from a woman who measured Lillian with room to spare. Were Lillian feeling reasonable, she might have considered that the woman was measuring to make dresses for when Lillian had filled out a little: as it was, she should still have measured her precisely the first time.

When the woman - Philippa hadn’t introduced her - produced a faded red that would do nothing for Lillian’s complexion, Lillian couldn’t stand it anymore. She wanted Glory, and the dress Elaine had made for her, and most of all she wanted to go home and do a better job than the woman measuring her now. There was a  _ hole _ in the red fabric. A small one, true, and probably it would be well-hidden or tucked away in a seam, and maybe it was only sample fabric - Lillian didn’t care.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

The woman stopped and stepped back, eying her and then Philippa. “Melora, if it pleases my lady.”

“Your name is fine,” Lillian said, stumbling over her boiling anger for a moment.  _ If she pleased.  _ “Is this sample fabric?”

“No, my lady,” Melora said, darting another glance at Philippa. “It’s what I had on hand, my lady, to bring up.”

Lillian eyed her, and eyed the bolts of fabric laid across the surfaces of the sitting room. The deep blue on the breakfast table had a raveling edge, and the burnt orange on the sofa looked worn with age. There was a blue-green, there across one of the tiny chairs, but it was dyed unevenly. 

“Elaine,” she said, “what do you think of the red?”

Elaine snuck her own glance at Philippa, but Lillian didn’t mind when Elaine did it, for some reason. Maybe it was because her entire livelihood depended on Philippa’s word.

“I don’t think it is your color, my lady,” Elaine said.

“It isn’t,” Lillian agreed. “It isn’t  _ anybody’s  _ color. What do you think about the weave on the grey?”

“Loose,” Elaine said, this time without looking at Philippa.

“This is what you bring to offer?” Lillian asked Melora. “Is this what you always bring, or are you hoping to foist some stock off on the poor girl who lucked into being the prince’s mistress?”

Melora flinched at the word  _ mistress,  _ but otherwise stood tall, and repeated, “It’s what I had on hand, my lady. We’ve had a great many orders this year - without more notice -”

“And what shop is it, that you don’t keep stock?” Lillian demanded. “A poor shop indeed-”

“The Gordainas keep a fine shop,” Melora snapped, tacking on a hurried, “my lady.”

“Gordaina,” Lillian repeated blankly.

Melora raised her chin, fists clenched in her skirts along with the knotted measuring cord, though her face was tight. “I won’t hear a word against them. We keep a fine shop, and it’s no fault of ours that the order’s late, or we had to rush for Lady Kaltain’s new gowns, or that you didn’t have the sense to give more time before an appointment.”

_ We. Ours.  _ Her parents’ shop, run by this loose-measuring, loose-weave offering - she said  _ ours  _ as if she had some claim to Lillian’s shop and Lillian’s parents.

No one had a claim on them but Lillian.  _ No one _ . Philippa watched her as if she might explode, and Lillian wondered what her face looked like.

“Get out,” she ordered.

Elaine and Gytha exchanged looks. Sara looked as if her previously tame puppy had bitten her. Philippa’s eyes narrowed.

Melora, though, jerked her chin up even farther.  _ “Gladly.” _

Lillian didn’t stay to watch her pack up the fabric. She stomped back to her room and stared out to sea, wishing once again that it overlooked the city. Maybe she could be proved wrong, then. Maybe Melora would go somewhere other than the shop. Maybe Lillian’s parents hadn’t replaced her with an inferior dressmaker.

* * *

 

 

She didn’t bother trying when Chaol dragged her off for exercise, just let herself be thrown around like a doll.

“You’re going to die if you keep this up,” Chaol told her after the eighth time he’d tossed her into the wall. “Heaven help you if someone comes after you with a blade.”

Lillian just got up and let him throw her for the ninth time. By the time he had yelled his voice sore and bruised her all over it was dinner time. She ate mechanically and went to bed.

“You aren’t going to do anything stupid, are you?” Philippa asked warily after Lillian lay staring at the ceiling for a full minute. Philippa stood at the door, candlelight flickering over her face.

Lillian didn’t answer. Philippa hesitated a moment longer, but finally she left, taking the candle with her.

The door closed. Silence descended. Lillian smelled roses and salt air and something a little muskier, a little warmer. She wondered briefly what it was before deciding that she didn’t care.

“You need to be better aware of your surroundings if you’re going to be me,” someone said flatly from the corner.

Lillian scrambled out of bed with a thump.


	9. Chapter 9

The woman leaning against the wall, arms crossed, watched Lillian impassively. Lillian, feeling very vulnerable in just a nightgown, pressed herself against the wardrobe and wondered if she could sidle to the door. There were guards outside, weren’t there? Chaol was probably nearby - he wouldn’t want her to die before she killed the people the prince wanted her to kill.

Registering the woman’s words didn’t help a bit. The real Celaena Sardothien - the real assassin - was watching her, head cocked to the side. She didn’t seem to need to blink as much as other people.

“I’m sorry,” Lillian blurted. “I didn’t mean to!”

Celaena Sardothien cocked her head the other way. Lillian couldn’t see her eyes well in the dark, but they were light colored, and her hair was pale and cropped even closer to her scalp than Lillian’s was now. It might be as close to her scalp as Lillian’s had been, when the guards had cut it all off after Endovier. Her skin was much paler than Lillian’s, but they were similar heights.

“Didn’t mean to what?”

Lillian couldn’t answer. She had, demonstrably, meant to pretend to be Celaena Sardothien: here she was, being called by the name.

“Don’t cower,” Celaena Sardothien said. “If I was going to kill you I’d have done it earlier.”

Lillian did not stop cowering. “If you don’t want to kill me,” she managed, voice shaking, “why are you here?”

Celaena Sardothien stepped away from the wall and came towards Lillian. Her movements were unpredictable, Lillian noticed, even over such a short distance: a few steps were normal steps, brisk, like a soldier’s. The last step covered more ground than should have been possible, leaving both of them nose to nose.

Green-blue, Lillian thought a little hysterically. Celaena Sardothien’s eyes were mostly blue, but they had a tinge of green to them, like the fires street magicians liked to produce.

“You don’t look much like me at all,” Celaena Sardothien said. “Different bone structure.”

Her hair didn’t look blonde, even platinum blonde. It was, Lillian realized, going grey.

_ She’s my age though,  _ she thought, still with that edge of frantic hysteria.

“Please don’t kill me,” she said.

Celaena sighed, breath puffing into Lillian’s open, panting mouth. It smelled like peppermint. “That’s what they all say, at the end. I thought a girl who survived the mines might be more original. I thought there might be something special about you.”

Lillian shook her head, a tiny, frantic jerk more than anything. Her nose brushed Celaena’s.

“No,” Celaena said without backing away. “Just a normal girl. But you did survive Endovier, and I suppose I owe you something for making sure I didn’t have to.”

There was a point, Lillian had learned, that a continued state of terror couldn’t continue. The body couldn’t do it. She had reached that point in Endovier, when she had decided to live. She knew that eventually she would hit it here.

She had not hit it yet. She trembled like a rabbit cornered by a very large wolf - only rabbits, in those situations, would eventually fight back. Rabbits, Lillian had found, could be nasty.

Lillian didn’t have it in her to be nasty right now. She could smell her own sweat, and it mingled unpleasantly with Celaena Sardothien’s minty fresh breath.

Celaena moved abruptly away, in one of those ground-eating strides form before. She crouched on the windowsill and said, “I’ll come back for you another night. Don’t tell anyone I was here.”

LIllian would swear she hadn’t blinked, but a moment later the assassin was gone, and Lillian hadn’t seen her go. She considered going to the window and looking out, but no. If Celaena was still there, she didn’t want to know. After a brief consideration, Lillian dragged a blanket from the bed, opened the wardrobe, and curled up inside. The sweat and close quarters reminded her too much of Endovier to be truly comforting, but she had a blanket and no one could sneak up on her in a wardrobe.

Probably.

* * *

 

 

She woke to the wardrobe door opening and Philippa peering inside, which meant it hadn’t been a dream. That was unfortunate.

Tea that morning, after she had rinsed off her fear sweat, was mint. She pushed it aside, ate her oatmeal, drank her water, and submitted to fittings conducted by Elaine, who measured precisely and assured Lillian that she would find decent fabric.

“Sara’s good with plain seams,” Elaine continued. “You’ll want me for embroidery or pleating or things like that.”

“In the meantime,” Philippa said, “Dorian wants you ready to present to his father.”

Lillian flinched, nearly falling off the stool Elaine had set her on. Elaine steadied her.

“I can maybe have something plain done by this evening,” Elaine began worriedly, but Philippa cut her off.

“Lunch. She’ll go back to her usual schedule after.”

“I can’t have anything ready by then!” Elaine protested. “Even with Sara doing seams-”

Lillian wondered what Elaine and Gytha and Sara thought her schedule  _ was.  _ Did they know who she was supposed to be?

“She’ll wear the first dress,” Philippa said. “She likes it enough, she can wear it to meet the king. It’s informal.”

Elaine drew herself up, grip still firm on Lillian’s elbow. “She can’t meet the king in a  _ hand me down dress.” _

“She’d have a new one if she hadn’t thrown a fit yesterday,” Philippa said, levelling a look at Lillian, who tried to look defiant instead of chastened. She suspected it didn’t work.

She thought,  _ if I was really Celaena Sardothien, none of you would question me. You’d be too afraid.  _ But she didn’t want to be Celaena Sardothien. Probably.

Elaine frowned mightily but pulled the dress from the wardrobe, soothing her ire by making it fit even more perfectly than before. Lillian suspected the seams might have to be picked out to get her out of the dress. While she did that, Sara assisting and Gytha ducking into the bedroom to neaten it up, Philippa disappeared. She returned with  heeled silvery slippers.

“It’s fashionable these days to go barefoot,” Philippa said, eying Lillian critically, “but no one who sees your feet will think you’re a noble. I suppose we could work on the calluses, but, well.”

Elaine frowned thoughtfully as Gytha handed her white gloves, which she helped Lillian into. The calluses on Lillian’s hands hadn’t faded at all.

Chaol opened the door. “Is she ready?”

“I was told lunch,” Lillian protested, though she didn’t resist when Philippa chivvied her to the door.

“The king likes to keep everyone on their toes,” Chaol said. “Philippa got you ready early for a reason - she knows his tricks better than most.”

Was that because she’d lived here longest? Lillian wondered. Nesryn waited in the hall, with a board and papers, and the prince was just beyond with two guards. Nesryn fell into step just behind Chaol, who kept a firmer grip than Elaine’s on Lillian’s arm.

“I thought you were getting new dresses,” Nesryn commented, and Chaol swept a surprised glance over Lillian.

“Oh,” he said. “Haven’t you worn that before?”

Nesryn wrote something down, which was when Lillian noticed the hole cut into the board for a small ink pot.

“It doesn’t matter,” the prince hissed, and Nesryn wrote something else down.

Lillian wondered what Nesryn did as Chaol dragged her along: Philippa had talked about training with her, but Nesryn seemed to be a secretary, and surely someone trusted enough  _ and  _ skilled enough to train the prince’s pet assassin was supposed to be skilled with weapons? Adarlan didn’t have women soldiers, but the royal family didn’t seem to have a problem with woman assassins, so why wasn’t Nesryn Dorian’s chosen left hand?

Maybe, she thought with a swoop of dread, maybe Nesryn  _ was.  _ Maybe Lillian-as-Celaena was a feint. Maybe she was bait.

But why go to all this trouble for bait? Why assign Philippa to her, who the prince clearly cared about, and why bother training her with Chaol?

Lillian needed to remember that none of them were her friends. The prince didn’t care about her as a person. Chaol didn’t. Probably Philippa didn’t either. Celaena Sardothien probably wanted her dead, whatever she’d said last night.

“Can I see Glory?” she found herself asking. The prince stopped, which made Chaol and Lillian nearly run into him and his guards turn around.

The prince looked over his shoulder at her, long enough that she began to shrink against Chaol, who was in no way comforting.

“Your father doesn’t approve of tardiness,” Chaol said. Lillian couldn’t be sure, but he might have shifted, just a little, just enough that he was between her and the prince on a technicality.

“We’ll talk about it later,” the prince said finally, and started off again. Nesryn, Lillian couldn’t help but note, had begun writing again.

They stopped again in front of a set of double doors, both flanked with footmen and both covered in tiny mirrors so that Lillian felt as if she was looking at hundreds of herself, all looking pale and unnerved. She didn’t look much like Celaena Sardothien now, if she ever had. She realized they had all forgotten about getting her a wig.

The prince straightened his hair, threw his shoulders back, and nodded to the footmen. They opened the doors, and their little party walked in.

It was not the throne room, as Lillian had half expected. The windows here were more cleverly worked panes of glass, but they were not single panes in large frames. They were colored and in patterns, allowing the still eastern sun to cast pictures on the floor.

The pictures contained a lot of red, and a lot of dead people. Lillian tried not to grimace at the rug in front of a large desk, where a slightly distorted depiction of the victory parade for the end of the Terrasen Conquest lay shining, stylized bodies carried on pikes in front of a returning host. The bodies’ eyes were open, which they hadn’t been in reality - the better to see the bright green of the Queen’s and the pale, ice-blue of the king’s. Lillian remembered asking her father later what had happened to the prince and princesses: he’d said no one had quite had the stomach to parade dead children around.

Lillian hadn’t thought about it then, but now she did: the king had paraded Melisande’s five year old heir on a pike with his mother later. Why had he balked at the Terrasen royal children?

“Dorian,” a light voice said. Lillian looked up to see the prince bow, and in time to be tugged into an awkward bow by Chaol. She tried to turn it into a curtsy, but Chaol’s arm in hers fouled her, and her knee bumped his.

She looked up again when Chaol rose. King Roland Havilliard of Adarlan looked over his son with a pitying air, as if Dorian had failed in some way.  _ I’m not angry,  _ the look said, eyebrows raised a little, the tiniest of rueful smiles on his face.  _ I’m just disappointed. _

The back of the prince’s neck flushed. “Father?”

“You’re late,” the king said, oh so gently. “As usual.”

Dorian tensed, but lowered his head. “I apologize, Father.”

“Punctuality is necessary, for a king,” the king said, still gently. Lillian glanced sidelong at Chaol, who was clearly trying to hide a frown and failing.

_ The king likes to keep everyone on their toes,  _ Chaol had said, and then,  _ your father doesn’t approve of tardiness. _

Lillian had the sudden suspicion that they would have been late no matter what time they actually arrived.

“Yes, Father.”

The king remained staring at the prince for a long time, the expression still on his face, before he sat back in his chair. “What have you brought me?”

The prince beckoned. Lillian stepped forward - slowly, in case the guards she hadn’t noticed at first, in the cacophony of blinding stained-glass light, took umbrage - and curtsied again.

“I decided I would use the best,” the prince said. “Father, meet Celaena Sardothien. Celaena, the King of Adarlan.”

Lillian, for lack of anything else to do, curtsied one more time. At the shop, the nobles had all liked receiving multiple curtsies.

The king sat forward again, head cocked to one side, watching her. She blinked - he watched her the same way Celaena had, last night, and he looked far more interested.

“Celaena Sardothien,” he repeated.

“Yes,” the prince said. “I took her from Endovier.”

“And you made her your left hand.”

“Yes,” the prince said again. “Is that acceptable?”

The king began to smile. Lillian didn’t like it - it wasn’t the rueful smile of before, that made him look almost approachable. This one showed a great many teeth and it lent a strange light to his eyes, though that could have been the windows.

“By all means,” he said. “ _ Celaena Sardothien  _ is most skilled.”

Lillian met his eyes, surprised by the stress he placed on the name, and he smiled even wider. The hairs on the back of her neck stood - did he have sharper canines than most people, or was that just her?

“Tell me, girl,” he said, “How did you like my mines?”

What could she say? She looked frantically at the prince, who looked back and gave the tiniest shake of his head.

Lillian said nothing, and decided to pretend the toes of her slippers were the most interesting things in the room. When she looked down, the dead Queen of Terrasen’s face stared up at her.

The king barked a laugh and said, “I look forward to seeing what  _ Celaena Sardothien  _ can do.”

The emphasis finally made a sort of sense in her head, but she refused to believe it. Still it pounded at her as the king dismissed them. It wasn’t until she was nearly back to her rooms, everyone silent around her, that she finally acknowledged the truth.

The king knew she was not Celaena Sardothien. He had to. She and Celaena didn’t look  _ that  _ much alike, eyes aside, and even then they weren’t  _ really  _ the same color. If he knew now, he probably knew then, and even if he hadn’t…

The king had known she was not Celaena Sardothien, and he had sent her to Endovier anyway.


	10. Chapter 10

Lillian fell into a sort of routine the following week, after she received a note from the prince that said she could visit Glory in the kennels if she wished. It took five minutes before she could make herself walk out the door the first day, and she thought her heart would beat its way out of her chest when she had to ask directions - she had forgotten to ask Philippa or Elaine, and they had either forgotten to tell her or had forgotten she wouldn’t know - but she managed to make her way down. Glory seemed pleased to see her, and Lillian was pleased to see Glory.

She might have snuck the dog some cheese to make  _ sure  _ Glory would want to see her, but one of the handlers caught her at it one day and gave her a conspiratorial wink, so Lillian thought it was probably permitted.

Lillian began going to the kennels before bathing, since she would need to bathe afterwards anyway to prevent Philippa from making pointed comments about smelling like wet dog. The handlers let her walk Glory, even, though Lillian was nearly certain Glory was one of the prince’s hunters and as such didn’t need a leash. They have her one anyway, and pretended to be impressed that Glory would walk next to Lillian’s hip as pretty as you pleased until Lillian let her sniff around one of the garden courtyards.

After Glory, Lillian bathed and ate and tried to distract herself in her suite until lunch, which was now a light meal. Chaol would arrive right after and make her walk circles around the training room before he commenced to making her practice holds and throws and stances. Another bath and dinner followed, and bed where she fell asleep waiting for Celaena Sardothien to make another appearance and possibly some sort of demand, and then Philippa would wake her up in the morning and the cycle would continue. During all of it Lillian tried to convince herself that she was wrong and the king couldn’t possibly know she  _ wasn’t _ Celaena Sardothien. 

So she’d heard a funny emphasis on the name when he was looking at her. So what? Maybe he hated Celaena Sardothien with a fiery passion. Lillian couldn’t say she blamed him. Maybe he was only entertained by the thought of a notorious assassin serving him, even if the idea of notorious assassin still seemed like a paradox to Lillian. Maybe he just though the name was ridiculous.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. She still wanted to shiver when she thought of his canines, even if she was  _ sure  _ they were normally sized.

Her king wouldn’t have sent the wrong person to Endovier. Not on purpose. He was a hero, and a patriot, and - well, a hero. He had confined magic when the northern demon-queens were using it against Adarlanian troops. He had personally gone to the front lines. He took care of his people.

But did he, though? He hadn’t taken care of her. He didn’t really police the city much, did he? When the guards had grabbed her and she hadn’t realized they were guards - truthfully, even after she had realized they were guards - she hadn’t thought, ‘this can’t be happening, this never happens’ she had thought about two weeks before when a girl from her neighborhood had been grabbed, and how she’d died a few days after someone had found her, and the girl before her, and the boy last year who had been delivering pastries, and…

The king had still confined magic. It was magic that had kept Adarlan confined, and magic that had kept the Terrasen demon-queens in power when their people would have risen up and demanded freedom otherwise. It was magic that allowed Wendlyn to raid the coasts so easily, to slip past the navy and the lighthouses, and magic that Melisande sacrificed people to gain more of. The world was better off without magic, and the king was the man who had made that happen. That kind of man wouldn’t send an innocent girl to Endovier on purpose, she told herself.

Most of the time she believed it.

* * *

 

 

The second week, there were people in her usual courtyard. She paused at the entrance, and Glory paused with her, looking up as if she expected an explanation. Lillian patted her on the head.

She considered leaving, but she was caught by the dresses the two women wore. One wore a deep, bright blue, cut close to emphasize a slim waist but, to Lillian’s surprise, as high-necked as Lillian’s first dress. The neck wasn’t lace on this one, though, just more gleaming fabric. The seams came in from under the arms, Lillian noted with interest, and ran down her front, emphasized with golden embroidery that in turn emphasized a bosom Lillian might have been jealous of before Endovier. The seams and embroidery continued down the full skirt to a wide strip of lighter brocade around the hem.  The color showed off how pale she was, which made the pitch black hair she sported shocking. Lillian approved, though she thought she could have made the dress fit even better. The waist did manage to show off the woman’s slenderness, but Lillian thought it should have been just a touch lower.

The other woman had much darker skin and curls twisted into ringlets down her back and forehead, with what might have been actual gold dust sprinkled through it. She was shorter than the other woman, with a larger waist and hips. Her dress was red, as deep and vivid as the other woman’s blue, with no brocade but more embroidery. It looked almost like it had been wrapped around her, the edges of the embroidery peeking in and out until it spun out from her hips in wavy lines. It left her arms free, and though the neckline didn’t go all the way up to the chin it still covered her collarbone, the way the skirts moved suggested you might catch a glimpse of leg if you looked hard enough. 

The dress would never show leg if the woman wearing it didn’t want it to, though. Lillian could tell, and she remembered what Gytha had said. This must be Princess Nehemia.  _ Had  _ high necklines come back into fashion?

Glory huffed, and to Lillian’s horror the pale woman in blue looked up. Lillian curtsied briefly, a quick spread of her skirts and drop of her head, and would have left, but the woman in blue started in her direction. Princess Nehemia followed, arm linked with the other woman’s.

“Lady Lillian,” the pale woman said when she came to a stop in front of her. Glory pressed herself against Lillian’s skirts, watching.

“My lady,” Lillian replied, ducking her head. She couldn’t curtsy with Glory trapping her skirts against her legs. “I’m sorry, my lady, I don’t recall-”

The woman waved her off. “We haven’t met. You’re the talk of the castle - you’ve managed to oust Nehemia, here.”

Dog or no, Lillian curtsied to Princess Nehemia deeply. 

“Kaltain,” the princess murmured with a reproving look. “Be nice.”

“I’m always nice,” Lady Kaltain protested, watching Lillian with unnervingly steady blue eyes. She blinked finally, as if reminding herself that she needed to, and turned back to Nehemia.

“Be  _ nicer _ ,” the princess said, and in Eyllwean added, “she’s terrified.”

Lillian wondered if she should mention that she knew Eyllwean. Her mother had insisted.

Kaltain took the choice from her when she laughed and said, “I think she understood you.”

Nehemia blushed, though it was barely noticeable, and raised her chin. “I apologize.”

_ Apologized?  _ No one had apologized to Lillian in three years at least. It was a small thing, and possibly silly, and Nehemia was a  _ princess  _ and probably used to the reaction, but - Lillian would have, in that moment, happily died for her. Kaltain’s face softened, but Lillian only noticed because she murmured in Nehemia’s ear, “You’ve made another conquest.”

Nehemia elbowed her.

“I - we used to speak Eyllwean at home, sometimes,” Lillian said in the language. Her tongue felt clumsy, though she had used the language in Endovier more than she had used Adarlanian. Her syllables were broader, her consonants less precise than Nehemia’s - even in Eyllwe, there were differences between the way commoners and nobles spoke, and aside from that Lillian had never managed to shake the hint of an Adarlanian accent.

She could feel Kaltain examining her again, looking for hints that Lillian wasn’t purely Adarlanian - not that anyone was, these days. Even the nobles had married into other royal and noble families. 

But Nehemia smiled at her and said, “I would enjoy speaking more with you, Lady Lillian. Aside from my guards, only Kaltain speaks Eyllwean with me here.”

Nehemia should have ladies with her, Lillian thought, appalled. Maybe she did. Maybe they just didn’t speak Eyllwean. Maybe they were Adarlanian. 

“I would be honored,” Lillian said with another deep curtsy. Glory sneezed.

“And who is this?” Nehemia asked, releasing Kaltain’s arm to crouch and hold a hand out to Glory. Kaltain’s looked very briefly annoyed, but it settled easily into bland good humor a moment later.

“This is Glory,” Lillian said. “She’s one of the prince’s dogs, she’s very friendly.”

Glory was already licking Nehemia’s face. The princess laughed, which made Lillian like her even more. Kaltain didn’t step back, but she eyed Glory warily. Was she afraid?

“She’s very friendly,” Lillian said again, to Kaltain. “If you’d like to pet her-”

“Animals don’t like me,” Kaltain replied easily. “I’ll stay back. But the Queen is holding a little party tomorrow - she never minds new ladies. You should come and help me keep Nehemia company.”

Lillian hesitated. Would she be allowed? But Nehemia stood with one last pat to Glory and said, “Please come. Queen Georgina is kind, but she is forever trying to talk me into Adarlanian dresses, and it will be good to speak Eyllwean more.”

“The queen would, I think, love to meet you,” Kaltain said with a smile. Lillian eyed her, wondering how much sarcasm was contained in that sentence, but Nehemia had asked, and Philippa had said she should learn the court.

“I would enjoy that,” Lillian said, thinking that maybe she could convince Philippa to talk to the prince.

“I’ll send a maid with the details,” Kaltain said, and took Nehemia’s arm again with more presumption than Lillian would have attempted - but then, Kaltain was a real lady. “Have a lovely walk with Glory.”

Nehemia nodded at Lillian with a smile, and they left.

Glory, after a moment, sneezed again.

“You are a charmer,” Lillian told her. “I should take you to the party.”

Glory trotted off to sniff around the courtyard.


	11. Chapter 11

Lillian could hear the shouting match from her bedroom when Philippa proposed the plan to Chaol, even if she didn’t have her ear pressed to the door..

She had a blanket wrapped around her shoulders for added security. The old child’s trick was surprisingly reassuring: surely nothing could hurt her while she was wrapped in a blanket. She did wonder if the party was worth it. Maybe she should go out and say never mind, she didn’t even want to go, why  _ should  _ she go - 

“She has to be seen sometime!” Philippa shouted.

“You want to put her in the same room as the queen?”Chaol demanded, for the third time. Each time he grew increasingly more shrill.

“Nesryn will be there, guards will be there-”

“The princess will be there!”

“Lillian won’t hurt a little girl.”

The silence was absolute for a long moment.

_ “Lillian,”  _ Chaol said.

Philippa remained silent.

“Her name is Celaena Sardothien,” Chaol said, “Whatever we say outside this room, whatever her maids think, whatever we pretend - she is Celaena Sardothien, and she kills people for money, and you want to put her in a room with the queen and the princess, because you think  _ Celaena Sardothien  _ won’t hurt a child.”

“I probably wouldn’t,” a voice said from right behind Lillian, who was too surprised to scream. She turned to see Celaena Sardothien herself standing behind her, head cocked, unblinking eyes fixed just beyond Lillian’s head.

_ I am in the blanket,  _ Lillian thought, first and nonsensically, and then,  _ she could kill me if I was in full armor, what is a blanket going to do?  _

“Not unless she got in the way,” Celaena Sardothien continued. “Or I was hired to. Killing people is actually tiring - there’s no point, if there’s no point.”

Lillian took a moment to sort out that statement.

“You don’t have a moral objection to killing a little girl,” she said slowly, “but you wouldn’t do it if you weren’t getting paid?”

Celaena shrugged one shoulder. “I’m an assassin,” she said, as if it explained everything. Lillian supposed it did.

“They aren’t letting me go anyway,” Lillian said, unable to blame Chaol at all if he truly thought she was this woman, who wouldn’t have any problem murdering a child.

“Lady Kaltain will keep trying,” Celaena said. “They’ll let you out eventually. They have to. How else will you get anything done?”

“I’m not going to get anything done anyway,” Lillian retorted. “I’m not  _ you.” _

Celaena stepped back and perched on the bed, watching her, and Lillian remembered that she was afraid of the woman she had just talked back to.

“Would you like to be?” Celaena asked.

Lillian bit back the instinctive  _ not in a million years.  _ “People like you get sent to Endovier,” she said carefully.

“I think you’ll find it’s people like me who don’t,” Celaena replied, but then her attention snapped to the door. Lillian felt it open against her back and flung her arms out to catch herself.

“I was just,” she began, trying to think of a way to explain Celaena, but Chaol looked down on her in weary resignation.

Philippa, behind him, pursed her lips.

“I suppose listening at doors is a habit of assassins,” he said. “And we were discussing you.”

Lillian was not sure if she should try to smile or not. She darted a quick look over her shoulder - Celaena was gone.

Chaol followed her glance and looked back at her, cocking an eyebrow.

Lillian shrugged.

“You’re going,” Philippa said. “After much debate, the benefits outweigh the possible murder.”

Philippa had called her Lillian instead of Celaena, and though she was gruff now, Philippa had worried about her wellbeing in the beginning. It was probably from expedience - what benefit was a dead assassin? - but it had been genuine nonetheless.

Chaol grimaced. “Lady Kaltain isn’t one of Dorian’s adherents. They don’t get along. But she doesn’t support anyone else either - and the Princess Nehemia might be an asset worth cultivating.”

“Don’t underestimate either of them,” Philippa warned. “Kaltain has survived as a minor noble without a patron for years, and she just gets richer. Somehow. And she’s battened onto Nehemia, which means the princess is easy to manipulate or cannier than we thought.”

Why didn’t you think she was cany? Lillian wondered. She’s born and raised to court intrigues, the same as any nobles here, and she’s the heir.

“Queen Georgina is fond of Dorian,” Chaol said, “and she doesn’t have a son to replace him, and she spends very little time with Hollin. We can count her as an ally for now, and Princess Gwyneth is only two. She can’t inherit anyway. Make friends, keep an ear out - you know how.”

Lillian did know how, but not for the reasons Chaol thought. When you catered to the nobility, you learned to listen for the latest trends, the latest gossip, the latest power shifts, the latest  _ anything.  _ Being on the cutting edge of fashion was an important business and a cutthroat one: stealing designs or bribing shopgirls wasn’t unheard of.

The whole thing sounded like Lillian’s old every day, just with more money involved - and possibly murder. They hadn’t asked her to murder anyone yet, though.

“Elaine will have your dress ready by morning,” Philippa said. “Sara will help her.”

“I can help too,” Lillian offered automatically. “I have a good hand.”

“Sleep,” Philippa ordered, after sending a look at Chaol that Lillian couldn’t quite read. “The fewer bags we have to hide, the better.”

Lillian, thinking back to her look in the mirror this morning, said, “I don’t think an extra hour of sleep will help.”

Philippa shooed Chaol out and turned to watch Lillian sit on the bed, tucking her legs up in case Celaena was under it. Lillian felt a little foolish, like a child who thought a monster was hiding under the bed, but in this case a monster might be. She almost warned Philippa not to get too close.

Philippa sat on the bed with her. “You don’t have anything to worry about,” she said. “Kaltain is unpleasant, I’ve heard, but there will be other ladies there for you to talk to.”

“Unpleasant?” 

Philippa considered. “Maybe unpleasant is the wrong word,” she said slowly. “None of her servants complain of mistreatment, but they don’t talk about her warmly either. She likes her privacy, I suppose. None of her maids stay with her. But she has sent a number of noble ladies packing when they tried to be her friend.”

So I won’t try to be her friend, Lillian thought. I’ll be Princess Nehemia’s instead.

“The queen will like you if you’re quiet,” Philippa continued. “Gods know she gets little enough of quiet, but maybe that’s her fault - she keeps all those twittering songbirds around her day and night, and around Gwyneth, too. Safety, she told Dorian.”

No one could accuse her of treason if she was always watched, Lillian thought.

Philippa shrugged, reaching out to brush the short curls of Lillian’s hair off her forehead. She would make them frizzy, but Lillian allowed it. It was nice, to have someone treat her with unthinking affection.

Lillian knew it was unthinking, because Philippa froze right after, just for a moment, and returned her hands to her lap.

“She’ll probably like you anyway,” Philippa said.

Lillian ducked her head.

“We’ll wake you up extra early tomorrow,” Philippa said briskly, standing and stepping away from the bed. “A little bit of powder and no one will see those circles, and Gytha is hounding the wigmaker as we speak. It won’t be  _ exactly  _ the same color, but it will be close.”

Lillian twisted one of the curls Philippa had disordered around her finger to put it back into shape and said mournfully, “I used to be very pretty, you know. I didn’t need powder or wigs.”

Philippa turned to look at her, studying her closely. “Do you know, Lillian,” she said, “I don’t think you need them now.”

She raised her eyebrows when Lillian stared at her. “You’ll wear them anyway, of course. Court fashion cannot be denied - not by you.”

“You think I’m pretty?” Lillian asked, hating that it was suddenly important.

“I think anyone who survives two years of Endovier deserves more adjectives than pretty,” Philippa said, and left.

Lillian considered that for a moment - it was a nice sentiment, but it still hadn’t answered her question - before remembering Celaena.

She braced herself and leaned over the edge of the bed, raising the dust ruffle quickly to get it over with.

Blue-green eyes met hers.

“I can’t believe you’re actually under the bed,” Lillian blurted.

“I didn’t have time to go anywhere else,” Celaena said. “Did you think I could disappear, like a fae with air affinity?”

“How did you get out last week? I didn’t see you!”

Celaena rolled out from  under the bed on the other side, brushing herself off. It was unnecessary - Lillian knew for a fact that Gytha had swept under there this morning. 

“The balcony,” Celaena said, as if it were obvious.

“We are  _ four stories up,”  _ Lillian snapped. “Forgive me for not assuming that you just jumped over!”

Celaena shrugged. “I hung on to the rail. You’ll learn.”

Lillian opened her mouth to ask what exactly Celaena meant by that until she remembered. “You want to turn me into an assassin.”

“It doesn’t take much to be an assassin,” Celaena said. “It takes more to be a  _ good _ assassin. One who survives.”

Lillian did want to survive.

“Fine,” she said, as if she had a choice. “What do I do?”

“Be more aware,” Celaena said promptly. “I shouldn’t be able to sneak up on you like this. No one should. What did you do in the mines when some snuck up on you?”

“Cry,” Lillian said without thinking much about how it would sound. “Or scream. If it wasn’t a guard, we took care of each other. Or, well. We tried.”

Celaena blinked. It was long, and slow, and looked more surprised than anything, which was when Lillian remembered that Celaena had not, in fact, blinked in the last few minutes - not that Lillian could remember.

Was that part of being a good assassin? She thought her eyes would dry out.

“Balconies aren’t hard to climb onto and off of,” Celaena said as if Lillian hadn’t said anything. “Beds are usually easy to roll under. Curtains. Wardrobes. That screen over there. Doors. If it blocks a line of sight, you can duck behind it or under it, and so can somebody else.”

Lillian wondered if she should take notes.

“Look at everything,” Celaena continued. “You do that already, a little. I’ve noticed. You have to do it with your surroundings, not just with people.”

“How have you noticed?” Lillian asked instead of admitting that she only really looked at people to judge their clothes. “You’ve only seen me twice at night, and I’ve only been with Philippa-”

“Assume that I’m always watching you,” Celaena said, which wasn’t terrifying at all.

“Actually working at your lessons with the captain might help,” she added. 

Lillian glared at her lap and asked, finally, the real question. “Did the king know I wasn’t you?”

Silence greeted her. She looked up, half expecting to see that Celaena had disappeared again, but the assassin stood easily to one side of the door - the side it opened into, Lillian realized, so she wasn’t immediately visible if someone walked in.

“He knew you weren’t me,” Celaena said. “He has a use for me.”

Lillian nodded, and lay down without bothering to say anything else.

She woke up several times during the night. Each time Celaena was still there, watching. Lillian couldn’t decide if it was a comfort or not.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, y'all. Both of my jobs kicked into high gear and I have two weddings in two months. In both I am in the wedding party, so. Busy busy busy! Plus the new book came out and I'm trying to take at least some of it into account with my plans.

The queen’s party had turned out to be an evening garden party, which at least meant Chaol felt more secure: he could watch her. There were so many people watching her that Lillian sometimes wondered if she should be more careful about how she used the privy.

At the moment it  was only Chaol, as far as she knew, and he was getting sloppy. His throws were still picture perfect, his blocks textbook, but his mind was clearly elsewhere. She had successfully bored a captain of the royal guard enough that he wasn’t paying attention to her.

_ Actually work at your lessons with the captain,  _ Celaena had instructed, or near enough.

When Chaol grabbed her this time, Lillian let her feet slip into the correct position for the first time in years and realized that her left hand could still close tightly over something as large as a man’s arm. She twisted.

Chaol wasn’t technically  _ thrown -  _ he was too good for that, and she was still too unpracticed - but he did stumble against her, off balance and automatically bringing his leg up to sweep hers out from under her. She stepped back into him, foiling his momentum, and kicked sideways at his knee. He let her go so he could twist away, and he kept going until he was out of reach.

Lillian looked at him. He looked at her.

“Better,” he said finally. “Maybe we’ll let you practice with a sword sometime before the year is out.”

They didn’t have that long, and Lillian didn’t know how to use a sword. She said, “I prefer a staff.”

“For assassinations?” Chaol asked dubiously.

“I don’t see how a sword would be any less inconspicuous,” Lillian retorted. He shrugged, and made her try the throw again until she could toss him.

* * *

 

“Don’t speak to the queen until you’ve been introduced,” Philippa instructed as Gytha made sure the corset fit properly. The current fashions, Gytha assured her, were designed to emphasize slim hips, slimmer waists, and large bosoms. Lillian had one of those things, and her waist size was a direct result of being routinely starved. She hadn’t quite managed to put the weight she’d lost back on, but she had always had wide hips and smaller breasts anyway.

Philippa had produced stuffing for the corset so she looked as if she had a larger chest, though. Lillian poked at it, unconvinced.

“When you start making fashions you can get rid of it,” Philippa told her, and batted her hands away so Elaine could pull the dress up and begin fastening the tiny pearl buttons that ran up the back of her dress from tailbone to the top of her high lace collar.

Elaine had outdone herself. Instead of a lace insert, a warm ivory lace overlay went from near-solid at the neck to increasingly more loosely tatted until it became uneven near the hem, like flower petals. Under it, the burnt orange color of the gown itself was slowly revealed. LIllian didn’t have to worry about going barefoot this time: even fashion bowed to the possibility of getting noblewomen’s feet covered in dirt from the gardens. Her slippers matched the underdress exactly.

“Perfect,” Elaine said smugly. Lillian grinned at her in the mirror - Elaine had asked for her input on color and design, but the craft had been entirely Elaine’s. She had the right to be smug.

“Wig,” Philippa said, and Elaine and Lillian both grimaced. The wig wasn’t bad - this one had been secured into an upswept arrangement with strategically mussed locks of hair meant to hang around her face - but it was itchy, and Elaine had complained that it didn’t curl like Lillian’s hair did. Philippa pinned Lillian’s curls down ruthlessly anyway, plopped the wig on top, adjusted it a little, and pinned it just as ruthlessly in place. Gytha presented gloves (more lace, how did they get ahold of all the lace? Lillian did not let herself calculate how much it must have cost), and Sara slipped a wrap the same color as Lillian’s underdress and shoes over Lillian’s shoulders.

“A moment alone with Lady Lillian, please,” Philippa said when they had all finished.Gytha and Sara filed out obediently, but Elaine frowned at looked at Lillian.

Lillian glanced at Philippa before she nodded at Elaine, who dropped a quick curtsey and backed out.

Philippa snorted. “If I’d known letting her design gowns would win undying affection I’d have let her do it sooner. Don’t let it go to your head. Remember what we said about Kaltain.”

“Every word from you is engraved on my soul,” Lillian assured her, and flinched when she realized she was being sarcastic with a woman who could probably have her thrown back in Endovier with a word to the prince. 

She got a laugh in response, though. “Don’t kill anyone. Don’t die.”

Lillian thought that was probably good advice for all occasions, though she would be expected to kill people eventually if the prince and Chaol could be believed.

“And try not to spill anything,” Philippa added, turning her towards the door. “Lace is hard to clean.”

_ I know,  _ Lillian thought. The door opened to reveal a blank-faced prince and a considerably less blank-faced guard captain. Chaol looked as if he had sucked on something sour. Lillian realized why when the prince offered her his arm.

She took it slowly, keeping Chaol’s black-clad form in the corner of her vision and trying to think like Celaena Sardothien wanted her to. If he came at her she could duck around the prince or Philippa and run for her rooms - and then what? Maybe Celaena’s plan to teach her how to hang off balconies had some merit.

Chaol wasn’t going to attack her now though, so she turned her attention to the prince. He was all in ivory the same color as her lace, with red and gold embroidery swirling around his shoulders and picked out delicately along the hems. It made his black hair stand out, but Lillian thought it clashed with his skin tone and didn’t give his eyes the emphasis they needed to really pop. The red and gold embroidery was, when she looked even more closely, a wyvern: it wrapped around his shoulders, mouth open as if to bite. Lillian didn’t like the way it looked like it was going for the prince’s throat, but she did like the dangling ruby drop he wore in one ear. Men hadn’t worn jewelry at court when last she’d heard.

“Do I pass inspection?” the prince asked dryly.

Lillian considered telling him to find a better advisor in regards to his coloring and discarded the idea. “I like your earring,” she said instead.

He snorted.

They walked in silence for several minutes before the prince said, “Call me Dorian at this.”

“I’ll try,” Lillian said.

“And…” he trailed off. Lillian waited. He sent a look at Chaol over her head, sighed, and continued, “Please be kind to my stepmother. Don’t be friends. She doesn’t need any more fake friends. But be kind.”

Lillian suddenly liked him a little better. He might not care if she died, and he might want her to kill people, but he cared about his stepmother. It was a scrap of humanity, at least. She nodded.

His hand tightened on her forearm as they approached an outdoor courtyard. The doors here were glass again, the glass over the doors worked into stylized sun rays in all sorts of reds and yellows. “And stay away from my sister.”

Lillian nodded again, and did not tell him he was hurting her. He let go a moment later anyway, as they stepped through the doors.

The queen brightened noticeably when the prince - _ Dorian, remember Lillian, call him Dorian _ \- entered and called him over. Dorian pulled Lillian along with him.

Queen Georgina was in the palest shade of pink Lillian had ever seen. She wasn’t even sure it  _ was  _ pink: it might have been white, and some trick of the reflected candlelight or the dresses of the ladies surrounding her. Either way it made the queen’s skin glow, and her expertly applied cosmetics made her green eyes - darker than Philippa’s - look especially piercing. Her hair was a deep reddish brown, and it didn’t look like a wig. Lillian couldn’t tell if it was dyed, either. 

She was ten years older than Lillian at most, and Lillian thought she might be younger. The candlelight made it difficult to tell.

The candlelight did not make it difficult to tell where the current body ideal had come from. Queen Georgina’s neckline was not shallow in the least, and only gave the slightest whisper of cover over her shoulders. What embroidery there was - a little bit down the front, to emphasize her slim waist - appeared to be gold.

Elaine was good. Whoever had made the queen’s dress might be better, and whoever had chosen the emerald drops in the queen’s ears and filigree gold necklace with matching tiny gems had known exactly the color of the queen’s eyes. Lillian wouldn’t change anything about the entire outfit. The person who made it deserved awards.

This was her  _ garden party  _ outfit? Lillian might murder to see her in full court regalia.

Dorian bowed over his stepmother’s hand and Lillian collected herself enough to curtsy.

“You’ve never brought anyone to meet me before,” the queen exclaimed to her stepson, and turned her smile on Lillian. “We’ll need to get to know each other better. A lunch, maybe. Next week? Just us.”

“If your majesty wishes,” Lillian managed, sending a panicked look at Dorian.

“Lillian may be busy, Lady Mother,” Dorian said smoothly, and Georgina’s smile dimmed a little before she turned it back up.

“Of course, I should have thought. You won’t have even seen the whole palace yet!”

Lillian shook her head, trying not to ask about her tailor.

“Lady Lillian,” Kaltain said, appearing as if from thin air beside them and dipping a quick curtsy to the queen. “Your majesty, Your highness.”

“Kaltain,” the queen acknowledged, nodding. She smoothed her skirts, and Lillian frowned. Why would the queen be nervous of Kaltain?

Lillian was certainly nervous of Kaltain, whose dress was a cold grey-blue tonight. Silver embroidery dotted it in seemingly random patterns, but Dorian frowned at it.

“Nehemia saw you come in,” Kaltain said with no other acknowledgement of the queen or the prince. “She asked me to ask you to sit with us.”

“I would be honored,” Lillian replied, glancing again at Dorian. He jerked his chin. She hoped he meant ‘go ahead’.

Kaltain smiled, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes, and dragged Lillian away as forcefully as Chaol had dragged her to meet the king. In Eyllwean she said, “She’s surrounded by stuffy old nobles who want to ask her how many wives her father has.”

“One?” Lillian said uncertainly in the same language. “Unless Eyllwean law has changed-”

“You’ll notice soon enough that most of the court is full of idiots,” Kaltain told her, and kept dragging. She had a strong grip.

Some of Nehemia’s tablemates weren’t old, though Lillian couldn’t speak for their stuffiness. A young brunette woman in a deep green gown was just asking  with an air of indifference if Nehemia was here looking for a good husband.

“Maybe you can give her some advice,” Kaltain said in Adarlanian, coming to a stop beside Nehemia’s chair. “Two years isn’t that long to go without a marriage proposal, after all.”

The young woman flushed, and some of the other young nobles at the table hid their smirks behind fans or hands. Others didn’t bother.

Nehemia turned a reproving look on Kaltain but brightened when she saw Lillian. “Lady Lillian! I did not know you had arrived.”

Kaltain was busy staring down a young man who had opened his mouth to say something and appeared to think better of it now, so Lillian couldn’t be sure how she would have reacted to Lillian learning that she had not been sent by Nehemia. 

“Lady Kaltain found me, your highness,” Lillian said, curtsying deeply. Nehemia’s dress was also white, which made Lillian wonder if white was a royal prerogative these days. It was similarly cut to the red one Lillian had seen Nehemia wear before, though it had no embroidery, and her hair once again sparkled with gold dust. No other jewelry was evident. 

“She is so attentive,” Nehemia said dryly, which earned a sidelong glance from Kaltain. Nehemia raised an eyebrow at her.

“I’m stealing the princess,” Kaltain told the table, tone brooking no argument. “She really has to try the punch.”

She didn’t drag Nehemia as she had Lillian, but it was close. Lillian followed with a sheepish smile at the nobles.

“I’ve had punch,” Nehemia said in Eyllwean, tone mild as they followed Kaltain to the refreshments table.

“I thought you had had enough of them,” Kaltain said in the same language. “If not, you can go back. I thought you wanted to talk to Lillian.”

“I don’t know how you navigate court so well with this attitude,” Nehemia sighed. “Lady Lillian will think you’re cruel.”

“I am only cruel to boring people,” Kaltain replied. “Are you boring, Lillian?”

Lillian, caught off guard, stammered, “I’ll try not to be?”

“There you are,” Kaltain said, and began serving them all punch.


	13. Chapter 13

Even Chaol admitted that the party had been a success. Lillian seemed to have become fashionable overnight: Nesryn delivered a stack of invitations the next morning. 

Kaltain had predicted it last night, telling an amused Nehemia and shrinking Lillian in Eyllwean that the sheep would soon start circling.

“Wolves?” Lillian asked hesitantly, thinking that maybe Kaltain wasn’t as fluent in Eyllwean as Lillian had thought at first.

“Sheep,” Kaltain said again. “Or perhaps cows. Certainly nothing so useful as goats.”

Nehemia tried to hide a smile. She wasn’t entirely successful as she said, “Kaltain!”

“Goats are very useful,” Kaltain continued. “Also clever. Now that we have taken to you, everyone will.”

Lillian stared at the pile of invitations and wished Kaltain had been less right. Chaol, who had arrived right after Nesryn, looked like he was thinking the same thing.

“You wanted her to have access to the court,” Philippa said now. “She definitely has access.”

“Not this much access,” Chaol said. “That pile is taller than she is sitting down.”

“Good,” Philippa replied as she took the top invitation and began to read. “Oh look, Lady Amarie wants to talk to her.”

Lillian didn’t know if that was good or bad news, but Chaol’s frown turned calculating, and behind him Nesryn nodded.

“Roland’s aunt,” Philippa said, watching Lillian oddly. “Not the king, Dorian’s cousin. It’s her the older courtiers look to.”

“For what?” Lillian asked. Nesryn was taking notes again. How long had she been at court?

“Everything,” Chaol said darkly. “There’s more than one reason the king thinks he can change heirs with little political upheaval.”

Dorian had said ‘cousins’. Plural. “How many cousins exactly is the king considering?”

“Three,” Philippa said. “Roland, Rickard, and Desmond.”

Lillian almost asked if they were brothers, or the children of which of the king’s siblings, or if they were more distant siblings, but Philippa still watched her and Lillian remembered that Celaena would have been around the court, and in and out enough to already know these things. She would have to find out on her own.

Dorian, Hollin, Roland, Rickon, and Desmond. She hadn’t heard of Rickon or Desmond before that she remembered. Maybe they hadn’t been popular until the king named them possible heirs. Roland had been: many young noblewomen had gossiped about his looks and bemoaned his lack of a more than adequate fortune. 

“Princess Nehemia also invites you to a small dinner,” Nesryn said, producing a small note with Eyllwe’s royal seal. “I didn’t want it lost.”

“Small dinner?” Chaol asked, taking the invitation to examine it. “Kaltain will be there.”

“They’re close,” Nesryn said.

“Who knows why,” Chaol muttered. “Well, good foreign relations can’t hurt, and Kaltain is Kaltain. Try not to get eaten alive.”

Lillian didn’t think Kaltain would do anything to her so long as Nehemia liked her, but she didn’t say so.

“The queen also requests a lunch sometime,” Philippa noted.

“The queen is already on Dorian’s side,” Chaol said. “We don’t have to woo her. He’s the only one who’s nice to her and the princess.”

“I can’t avoid meeting her then,” Lillian said, with a sad thought for the queen, who sounded awfully lonely. Lillian had hated feeling lonely, before Endovier. In Endovier she hadn’t had friends, exactly - it didn’t make sense to have friends - but her fellows had helped her when they could, most of them, and she had done the same. It wasn’t out of spite, exactly, but it was close: the guards could take everything from you, in the mines, but they couldn’t make all of you forget you were human. They had tried, of course.

“You don’t need to,” Chaol said, sorting through other invitations.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Philippa said. “That, or tell the queen who she really is. Georgina could help us.”

“Georgina isn’t even in charge of the court anymore,” Chaol countered.

“Neither am I,” Philippa said. “It hasn’t stopped me.”

Chaol grit his teeth but said, “I’ll ask Dorian.”

Then he dragged Lillian off to practice.

* * *

 

That night Celaena visited her again. “We’re going somewhere,” Celaena said.

“There are guards outside my door,” Lillian reminded her. 

Celaena gave her an unimpressed look.

“And I can’t go over the balcony,” Lillian added before that option came up. “I will fall and break something and they’ll think I’m trying to escape.”

“We just need to go down one story,” Celaena said. “There are open windows. And ledges. Plenty of handholds. Put these on.”

“One story of  _ four,”  _ Lillian hissed, fumbling the catch but managing to keep the bundle Celaena toosed her from falling to the floor. Celaena just stood expectantly by the rail. “Aren’t there guards?”

Celaena shrugged. “One side of the balcony isn’t visible from the walls or the courtyard entrance. Your prince can’t put anyone directly under your balcony without talk.”

“How do you know all that?” Lillian demanded, but Celaena didn’t deign to answer. Lillian dragged on the dark tunic and leggings and odds little lace-up shoes before she followed Celaena to the apparently hidden side of the balcony. She watched as Celaena slipped her legs over, dropped, caught the very base of the balcony, and swung herself onto the window ledge below.

Lillian considered praying, but it had never helped before. Instead she concentrated on not crying as she inched herself over the rail and braced her feet on the outside, slowly working her hands down the carved whorls until she was all but doubled over.

“Drop your legs,” Celaena hissed, sounding like she was trying to be patient.

Lillian gulped and obeyed. Now she hung over an empty courtyard by her hands, feet away from Celaena’s perch.

Celaena closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Now swing.”

“I’m going to fall,” Lillian whispered. Her hands were sweaty. She was almost sure her grip was strong enough, but her arms were already beginning to tire. This was not the exercise they were used to.

“Can you get yourself back up?” Celaena asked. Lillian shook her head, panic beginning to set in.

“Then all you can do is swing,” Celaena told her. “Or fall. You might not die, from this height. If you land properly. Do you know how to do that?”

Lillian shook her head again.

“So,” Celaena said, drawing out the word. “It looks like swinging is your only option. Unless you want to die after all.”

In that moment, Lillian hated Celaena. Even so, she was right, and Lillian had decided, back when Dorian asked her, that she did not want to die. Lillian took a deep breath and swung her legs forward.

They didn’t swing quite far enough. Lillian squeaked.

“Your momentum will carry you,” Celaena said, crouching on the ledge. “Do it again, for real, and let go.”

Lillian gritted her teeth, folded her legs up, and swung, letting go as her legs got closest to the ledge.

She hit, but barely, and she felt the sickening sensation of a fall before she was dragged bodily back to the ledge.

Celaena let go of her the moment she had her balance. “Sloppy.”

“I haven’t done this before,” Lillian snapped, sinking carefully against the wall so she could sit and catch her breath.

“Get used to it. Everywhere in this place has windows - they’re the easiest way around.”

“Why aren’t there more guards on them then?” Lillian demanded. 

Celaena shrugged. “I said easiest, not most used.”

It occured to Lillian that they were sitting on a window ledge in full view of whoever’s room this happened to be. The window was dark, though.

Celaena followed her look. “These rooms are empty this time of night. She doesn’t keep maids with her overnight, and she likes to stay up until near dawn.”

“She who?” Lillian asked as Celaena swung the window open.

“Kaltain Rompier,” Celaena said, and slid into the room.


	14. Chapter 14

“Kaltain lives right under me?” Lillian demanded, and was hit in the face with another bundle of cloth. “What-”

“Put it on over the other clothes,” Celaena said. “Maids’ clothes are easier for sneaking around inside the palace. No one looks at their faces.”

“And,” Lillian hazarded, trying to think like the assassin wanted her to, “the clothes underneath make our bodies look different?”

Celaena shrugged. “It isn’t a large enough difference to fool anyone who looks closely, but the trick is to keep moving like you have somewhere to be.”

When Lillian was dressed, Celaena opened the door to the hall and led the way out without so much as looking left or right. It made sense, Lillian supposed, given Celaena’s advice: why would maids be nervous about doing their jobs?

“If you want to learn things,” Celaena murmured, fussing with a towel as she hung it over her arm, “this is one of the best ways to do it.”

“What are the others?” Lillian asked. It was strange, walking in a dress over leggings and tunic. The fabric didn’t sit right, and she could only imagine how it bunched. She kept wanting to stride in the leggings, only to remember that she was wearing a skirt. 

Also, the fabric on the maid’s dress was heavy and didn’t breathe well. How did Elaine deal with it all day? It must be torture to walk around in something all day, knowing you could design something so much better.

It  _ was _ torture. Lillian glared down at the dress. She was so occupied in designing better livery in her head - lighter fabric for summer, obviously, but still sturdy enough for work. It would have to be easy to clean, and difficult to wrinkle, why had no one told her what a challenge designing uniforms was - that she failed to pay attention to anything Celaena was saying and ran straight into the assassin’s back when she stopped in the middle of the hall.

Celaena’s dress wasn’t any better than hers. It was some satisfaction, even if Celaena didn’t appear to be sweating.

“You aren’t listening, and you aren’t paying attention to your surroundings.”

Lillian wanted to protest but thought better of it.

Celaena didn’t sigh, which made the whole thing worse. If she had sighed, Lillian might have thought her an actual person with emotions.

“How would you get out of here if you were being chased?” Celaena asked.

“The window?” Lillian suggested before she realized that there was no window in this hallway. It was unfair: most everywhere else had windows. She really did need to be more aware of her surroundings.

Celaena stared at her. 

“Run?” Lillian asked.

Celaena turned and kept walking. Lillian didn’t know if it meant she’d been right or not. She suspected not.

* * *

 

“The best way to know anywhere,” Celaena said when they had successfully walked by guards and servants and arrived on the first floor, “is to walk it. First, obviously, you should observe all the guard rotations and general servants’ routes.”

“Of course,” Lillian said.

“Tell me how to get to your room from here.”

This Lillian knew: the hall they stood in was a possible route to the kennels. Instead of being impressed when Lillian gave her the route, Celaena said, “Now the kitchens.”

“I haven’t been,” Lillian admitted.

Celaena turned and started down a hallway. Lillian scurried after her.

* * *

 

When Lillian woke at her usual time, it was from a dream of stumbling through a maze of glass, a crowd of Celaenas watching through the walls on all sides. Only the thought of Glory got her out of bed: she had become used to a certain amount of sleep, and it was more than what Celaena had given her.

She staggered blearily into a loose morning dress in a pretty green that Elaine had laid out for her the night before  and then to the kennels, where she managed to clip the lead to Glory’s collar before she realized that the man sitting with the rest of the hounds was Dorian and not one of the handlers. His guards stood a discrete distance away, and Chaol was not among them.

“You come here every day,” Dorian said. 

There was a question implied there, but Lillian didn’t know if he actually wanted an answer. She bobbed a curtsy.

“Walk with me,” he ordered. Lillian was tired of trailing after people like a puppy, but she couldn’t do anything about it now. At least Celaena taught her things.

She and Glory followed the prince, his guards trailing them.

“Chaol tells me you’re getting back into shape,” he said.

“Yes, your highness.”

“Philippa has reservations. She thinks you’re fragile.”

“I’m not,” Lillian said, hand tightening on Glory’s leash. She made her chin stay level. “I can do whatever you want.”

“Good. It starts tonight.”

He kept walking. Lillian kept pace. Glory kept looking up at her, panting, trying to see why she kept such a tight grip on the leash when usually Glory would have been let loose to wander by now.

Today the prince wore a muted blue tunic and only a little bit of embroidery. No jewelry was in evidence, and his loose trousers weren’t courtly at all: they weren’t loose enough to move well with the long open robes some of the younger courtiers seemed to favor and not tight enough for the older generation’s love of high boots. Also, they were some in-between brown that Lillian hated.

Bizarrely, it was the lack of royal seal anywhere on him that made her think of his brother.

“Do you want me to kill the other contestants?” she asked.

Dorian jerked as if he had forgotten she was there. Maye he had.

“I-” he stopped, and after a moment started again. “I don’t want them dead.”

The answer sounded rote. Lillian tried not to let her judgment show on her face, but he glanced sidelong at her and grimaced. 

“I don’t,” he insisted. “I just don’t know any other way to win.”

“So I should kill them,” Lillian said.

Dorian ran a hand through his hair. Unless he was growing it out, he needed a haircut. “Yes.”

“Why is winning so important?” she asked. “Surely there are other ways to impress your father.”

“I didn’t suggest this contest,” Dorian retorted. “I’m not even sure it  _ is  _ a contest. So far the only thing I’ve been told is to try not to die and to win, whatever that means. I don’t want my brother dead, but I don’t trust him to rule, either, so excuse me for doing what a king is  _ supposed  _ to do and putting his country first!”

His voice got louder as he went along, and Lillian could feel herself shrinking farther away as it did. Glory whined, and Dorian looked over again and stopped abruptly.

“You’re white as a sheet,” he said, which she knew wasn’t true. She would never be that pale - she’d tried for a few years, with hats and creams, for fashion’s sake. “I’m not angry at you.”

Lillian tried to relax and couldn’t quite manage it. Dorian took a step away, and then two, watching her. “I’m not angry at you,” he said again.

Glory pressed against her legs, nudging her hand, and Lillian took a breath.

“I wouldn’t hurt you even if I was,” Dorian said quietly. “I promise.”

He frowned. “I mean, unless you were trying to kill me or something.”

Lillian couldn’t help it. She laughed.


	15. Chapter 15

No one had actually threatened Lillian that day, which was a nice change of pace, but once Philippa left her she slipped into the wardrobe again anyway. With the blanket and pillow it was surprisingly comfortable, and with the door propped open just a crack she could breathe easily enough. She didn’t have enough dresses yet to really rumple them if she moved them to the side.

Sleeping in the wardrobe saved her life. She woke to a soft curse. At first she thought it was Philippa or Chaol, though Chaol had never come into her room that she was aware of, but it was too deep to be Philippa and Chaol had never been subtle in his watchfulness.

She peeked out the wardrobe door. A man stepped away from her bed, knife glinting in his hand, looking slowly around the room.

He was between her and the window, Lillian thought, and anyway she wasn’t sure she could get over the railing fast enough, and even besides that what if he followed her into Kaltain’s room? Kaltain hadn’t shown any inclination towards physical self-defense.

Her only way out was through the sitting room and out to the guards on her door. Dorian wanted her alive, after all.

She shifted, easing her way out of the blanket and to the balls of her feet. When the man had his head turned away, checking behind the bedcurtains, she bolted.

The door didn’t move. Lillian jiggled the handle, indignation rising. They had locked her in?

One final yank convinced her and made her overbalance, which meant the knife thrown at her back grazed her shoulder instead. Lillian thought,  _ that was what I was so afraid of? I had worse at the mines,  _  and turned to face the intruder.

After all, he could only kill her. Everyone else here could send her back to Endovier.

He crouched, another knife in his hand. Lillian noted the way his clothes lay against him and decided he had more on his person. She didn’t have any knives. It seemed like an oversight on someone’s part.

Celaena had said she had to be aware of her surroundings for escape, but probably that doubled as knowing what around you you could use. Lillian knew her room well by now, having paced it so often with nothing to do between meals and practice with Chaol. She stepped sideways, back towards the wardrobe, keeping an eye on the man, who was creeping backwards. If he tried to run she’d let him go - not that she could do anything else.

She had a pillow and blanket in the wardrobe, she knew. She had a half-thought to throw the blanket at him, but mostly she wanted the hangers with her dresses or the shoes in the bottom drawer or maybe even the boots in the side cabinet. Boots were sturdy enough to make solid hits, she thought. Certainly they were leather, and people made armor out of leather. 

It was a good thing she was watching him closely. She knew exactly when he tensed up to throw another knife, and she lunged low, grabbing for the lower side cabinet. She had yanked it open and snagged the boots before she registered that she had heard a  _ thunk  _ that had nothing to do with her, and looked up.

Celaena perched on the balcony rail, the smallest crossbow Lillian had ever seen in hand. The now dead man lay crumpled on the floor, the fletching of the bolt barely visible against his clothes.

“What was your plan?” Celaena asked.

“People make armor out of leather,” LIllian said helplessly, gesturing with the boots. “These have tough soles?”

Celaena shrugged. “It’s not the worst plan you could have come up with.”

Lillian, at a loss for what else to do, put her boots back into the wardrobe. She had seen dead people before, at Endovier: she had sometimes been put on grave duty after one of the quick-striking fevers that liked to sweep the camp. The man was definitely dead. She didn’t know what to do with a dead body when she wasn’t on grave duty.

Celaena slipped in and reclaimed the bolt. Lillian winced at the sucking sound, but Celaena only inspected the bolt for damage  before she stuffed it back into a hip quiver.

“What do I do with him?” Lillian asked.

“Nothing,” Celaena said, pulling something out of her boot and laying down the crossbow. Lillian watched her shift the body to its side and look the front over. How Celaena could see much in this light Lillian didn’t know.

She clamped a hand over her mouth when Celaena swung her arm up and slammed it down, driving a knife directly into the wound left by the crossbow bolt. Celaena let the body fall back on its front. From the back, a very little bit of what looked like the point of a dinner knife emerged. Celaena shoved down on the back a little harder, and more of the knife was forced through.

“He’s already  _ dead,”  _ Lillian said, unable to stop herself.

“I wouldn’t be this close if he wasn’t,” Celaena said, stepping back and wiping her hands on a cloth she pulled from a pocket. “It’s straining credibility for you to have a crossbow hidden up here. The knife isn’t perfect, but hopefully they’ll be unnerved enough not to ask too many questions.”

“Where would I have gotten a knife?” Lillian asked, hearing herself go shrill. She covered her own mouth again and tried to breath through her nose. It was her imagination that let her smell the dead man from across the room, she tried to tell herself. She knew it wasn’t.

“Get creative,” Celaena said. “Leave him there for the morning. Keep practicing.” 

She left while Lillian was still asking her not to.

* * *

 

Lillian had stayed up the rest of the night watching the body as if it would move again, and so was awake the next morning to hear the key turn in the lock. She glanced outside: still dark. Was it Philippa who didn’t trust her, or Chaol? She supposed Dorian could have given the order.

She couldn’t blame them. If she thought she was Celaena Sardothien, she wouldn’t trust her either.

She drew on her best Celaena impression and called through the door, “I’d appreciate it if someone cleaned up this mess.”

A long silence followed, but the door eventually opened. Chaol surveyed her where she sat cross-legged on the bed, taking in the clumsy bandage on her shoulder and the bloodied nightdress on the floor. He stiffened immediately and checked the room, swearing when he saw the body by the window. He took two steps into the room before he remembered himself.

“Come in,” Lillian said, trying not to clench her fists. She failed, but she didn’t think it was too out of character. Not that anyone would notice, anyway.

“Is it bad?” he asked, gesturing to her shoulder.

“A scratch,” she replied. “But I didn’t have anything to clean it with, and I couldn’t go to the washroom, because my door was locked.”

He winced as she slid from the bed. She hadn’t been under the covers, just on top of them. She had wanted the freedom to move just in case.

“I’ll take care of it while you take care of that,” she said, and walked past him with as much self-possession as she could muster.

The cut stung while she cleaned it, but she felt better when she didn’t have smears of dried blood on her. Philippa even arrived with actual bandages and a poultice to keep out infection and wrapped it up for Lillian. She did it with more wariness than Lillian was becoming accustomed to, though.

The body had been removed by the time she returned to her bedroom, and the floor had been cleaned. She hoped it hadn’t been Sara who had to do it. Chaol leaned against the door to the balcony, dawn light making him a silhouette. The light glinted off something in his hand.

“Where did you get this?” he asked mildly. Lillian would presumably know what kind of knife she had killed someone with, but she couldn’t see it right now and hadn’t gotten a good look when Celaena had planted it.

Lillian shrugged as she had seen Kaltain do once or twice, a graceful movement of one shoulder that said not only could she not recall, she didn’t care to try. She walked back to the bed and sat, swinging her legs up so she could sit cross-legged. From here the light wasn’t shining directly behind Chaol and into her eyes, and she could see the knife he held. It was a dinner knife, and it had a wyvern pressed in graceful lines into the handle.

Chaol hadn’t cleaned it much: the blood covered it almost to the butt-end of the handle.

“Because it looks like a knife from Dorian’s personal service,” Chaol continued, watching her. “But the idea that you somehow took a knife that first night and kept it hidden - somehow - strains credibility.”

Celaena had said a crossbow would strain credibility, but had seemed to think the knife perfectly reasonable. Lillian shrugged again.

Chaol sighed. “I‘ll get you some real knives. If you haven’t tried to kill us yet you probably won’t.”

Lillian, for the third time, shrugged.


	16. Chapter 16

“You need to teach me how to use these things,” Lillian said later that night when Celaena appeared on her balcony. Lillian had been waiting for her since Philippa left an hour earlier.

Celaena did not seem discomfited to find Lillian sitting in the shadowy corner of the balcony, and she didn’t seem surprised about the knives Lillian waved at her either.

Even Lillian knew that they were good knives. They were heavy but not  _ too _ heavy, and she had managed to balance one on her finger before she remembered that she knew how to use a cooking knife but not a killing one.

“I’ll teach you the basics,” Celaena said. “It’s less important than you’d think, if you’re being careful.”

“I have to kill people,” Lillian pointed out. “It seems like knowing how to stab them is important.”

“Knowing  _ where  _ to stab them is important,” Celaena said. “If you listen to me you won’t be in a knife fight, you’ll just be stabbing them in their sleep.”

Lillian took a moment to absorb that statement, and did not like how Celaena didn’t seem to think anything of it. 

“After a while you stop caring,” Celaena said, exactly as if she had read Lillian’s mind.

“That seems like a bad thing,” Lillian said.

Celaena gave the same shrug Lillian had given that morning. It had all of Kaltain’s grace. Lillian supposed it made sense if they had learned it at the same court.

“They gave you something else?” Celaena asked, looking past her.

“A staff,” Lillian said, accepting the subject change gratefully. She went and picked it up. “I asked for it.”

“You know how to use it?”

“Yes,” Lillian said defensively before realizing that Celaena did not seem doubtful. “I’m a little out of practice.”

Celaena circled her. She paid special attention to Lillian’s grip on the staff, and Lillian tried not to feel insulted. “Who taught you?”

“My parents. My mother  - it’s a woman’s weapon, in Eyllwe. She taught me the basics.”

“And your father was a soldier.”

“He taught me too,” Lillian said. “Not the staff, much. My mother was better. He taught me some holds and tricks.”

He had read to her at night, her and her mother both. Lillian hadn’t forgotten, exactly, but she hadn’t thought of it lately either. Her parents had loved her, and now they had Melora and her shoddy eye for color.

Lillian was snapped out of her thoughts when her legs were swept out from underneath her.

“You weren’t paying attention,” Celaena said.

Lillian, staff still in hand, reacted without thinking: her furious jab with the staff made Celaena leap back just out of reach.

She was going to die, Lillian realized. Celaena was going to kill her for impertinence and be annoyed at the mess it made, if she left a mess at all. 

Lillian rolled anyway, after that split second of terror, and came up again, staff held in front of her, her parents’ admonitions echoing in her head:  _ never drop the weapon. _

Celaena watched her. 

“I’m not sorry,” Lillian said at last, knowing her voice didn’t sound as defiant as she wanted it to. 

“Good,” Celaena said, and lunged, a knife suddenly in hand. Lillian blocked imperfectly and almost too slowly, but she didn’t have time to consider it because Celaena came at her again and again and again.

By the time Celaena stepped back, barely winded, Lillian’s body had remembered the years of drills and practice. She panted, still on guard, and could feel sweat running down her back.

“Better than I expected,” Celaena said. “Not excellent, but you did manage. Your mother was a good teacher, for you to be this good after two years of salt mining.”

And starving and being beaten and always cold and hot at the same time…

“I stopped when I was seventeen,” Lillian said. Proper Adarlanian ladies didn’t use weapons at all, Lillian had told her mother. She’d regretted the startled, hurt look on her mother’s face, but she hadn’t regretted not having to practice the staff. She could have broken her fingers, and then who would have done the sewing?

Instead of revising her statement, Celaena said, “Tomorrow we’ll practice actually hitting with it. Now tell me how you would get to the king’s study from here.”

Lillian, keeping an eye on Celaena and a hand on her staff, did so. Celaena proceeded to ask about the rest of the castle, and Lillian, mental map firmly in place from nightly walks, answered all of them.

“The prince’s room,” Celaena said finally.

“It’s next door,” Lillian said.

“Your door is barricaded,” Celaena pointed out. “How do you get in?”

“The window.”

“The window in clear view of all the palace guards patrolling? Do you know the layout? Does he have a bodyservant who stays there? What about Captain Westfall? He’s always hovering.”

“I’m working for Dorian,” Lillian said. “I don’t know why I would need to know those things.”

Celaena looked unblinkingly at her from the chair she had taken. 

“Chaol is in charge of protecting him,” Lillian added. “I don’t need to know that.”

“What about the king’s room?”

Lillian opened her mouth and closed it.

“You hate him,” Celaena said, cleaning under her nails with a knife. “I don’t blame you. Why don’t you know how to get there?”

“You haven’t shown me,” Lillian protested. “And I am not going to do anything to  _ the king.” _

“I haven’t shown you,” Celaena repeated, looking up. “Do I have to show you everything, Lillian? Maybe you should take some initiative, like I did. Maybe you should  _ find  _ a way there.”

“Maybe you’ve been there and should tell me the layout, if I need to know so badly,” Lillian retorted. Her knuckles felt strained where she gripped the staff. Even her thumb was tight on the grip. 

“I don’t think you need to know,” Celaena said. “I thought you’d want to. Who started this whole competition? Who turned over a hundred and more years of tradition to open up the heirship?”

Lillian didn’t answer.

“The king,” Celaena said. “He wants the crown prince dead or out of the running. I know it. The court knows it. Dorian Havilliard knows it. Probably that captain knows it, and definitely the nurse. What happens when the only way to win is to kill the king?”

Lillian thought of the teeth that might have been too long, the eyes that had watched her and known she wasn’t Celaena Sardothien. She thought of King Roland Havilliard sentencing her to the mines and what should have been her death, and how he had thought it was funny in his study. 

“Why would he want Dorian dead, though?” she asked, to stave off the yawning pit in her stomach. She didn’t know if she would explode or fall apart if she looked into it.

Celaena shrugged. “Nehemia says he has a chance at being a decent human being. I know he argues with the king more than he should - maybe the king wants someone more biddable. What will you do, Lillian?”

She stared at Celaena. If Dorian died, she would go back to the mines. She would have failed, and that had been the deal. Could she run? Maybe now. Maybe Celaena would take her, as an apprentice or tagger-on or chambermaid or something. 

If she ran now, Nehemia and Kaltain would be alone, stuck again as the only two who could (or maybe would) speak Eyllwean. Nehemia should have more friends - she might, if people got over themselves, if she was here long enough for it to happen - but Kaltain couldn’t seem to make any, and she had been here longer. Dorian? Well, Dorian was a prince. He could find a replacement. Chaol and Philippa would be disappointed in her.

“I suppose, if it came to that,” Lillian said slowly, feeling through the words, tasting treason like wine that hadn’t  _ quite  _ gone to vinegar yet, “I suppose I’d kill the king first.”

Celaena sat back with a quick, cat-satisfied smile. It didn’t show any of her teeth. Lillian realized why: Lillian had not said she would  _ try.  _ She had not even considered the possibility that she would fail.


	17. Chapter 17

No one had tried to kill her in a week. No one had even _threatened._ Lillian sipped her tea and looked over the rim of her cup at Lady Amarie at another garden party, trying to assess the room and the people in it in addition to the lady’s primrose morning dress. It wasn’t nearly as pale as Georgina’s party gown had been, but the stitching and the embroidery looked as if they might be made by the same hand. There was more gold than Georgina sported, in scrolls down the sleeves and stars pricked out along the hem, and it was as high-necked as Kaltain’s dresses usually were.

Kaltain wasn’t here, and neither was Nehemia. Lillian was the youngest woman in the room, though Georgina sat at a little table some distance away, chatting with an iron-haired matron in red.

“The prince has so rarely introduced his mistresses to court,” Amarie said blandly.

Plenty of rich men had mistresses: it wasn’t even a terrible position to occupy, down in the city. It meant that once they were tired of you and moved on you usually had gifts to help you or your family start a small business or move.

Lillian supposed that if she were really a lady, she might be upset at the implication that Dorian had had other mistresses. Maybe she might have even now, if she was really his mistress. Since she was his assassin, Lillian did her best impression of Kaltain’s smug court smile and took another sip of tea.

Silence was serving her as well here as it had in the mines.

“Amarie will be for Roland,” Philippa had said earlier, fitting a wig with a much less ornate style than she had sported for the garden party to Lillian’s head. Lillian’s dress was also plainer: no lace, and the fabric was a grey-blue with simple embroidery of nearly the same color, with a narrow skirt and wide sleeves that fell unfashionably long over her hands in lieu of gloves. “She’s his aunt, and she’s had the raising of him since his mother died. She has good reason to expect rewards and precedence if Roland makes it.”

“More precedence?” Lillian asked.

Philippa shrugged. “Amarie is a force to be reckoned with, and her family is old enough that the old king let his daughter marry into it, but they’ve mostly gotten on by being unobjectionable to anyone in power. Amarie’s the one who really runs the fief, but she’s a daughter of the house who never married. She can’t actually do anything legally without her brother’s say-so.”

“She’d have to follow Roland’s say-so,” Lillian pointed out.

“But Roland likes her,” Philippa replied.

Amarie said now, “Georgina was so excited to meet you. I suppose she wants to know if you’re a suitable match for her step-son.”

“Her Majesty has been kind,” Lillian said, drawing on Nehemia’s bland court friendliness instead of Kaltain’s disdain and refusing to give any clue about her suitability. Men did marry their mistresses sometimes, or at least with just enough frequency to give some women hope. It probably helped if the mistress was noble-born.

“Not His Highness?”

“Dorian has been kind, too,” Lillian agreed, taking another sip of tea. He let her visit Glory and he fed her and he let her have new clothes. Their arrangement wasn’t actually very different from that of mistress and lover. Lillian wouldn’t have asked much more from any noble, except maybe some jewelry. She supposed he gave her that too. “But please, enough about me. I’m boring, really. Will I have the pleasure of meeting your nephew? I hear he’s as handsome as his cousin.”

Amarie smiled thinly. “Has Dorian mentioned him often?”

“Hardly at all,” Lillian said. “It’s why I’m so curious. I saw hardly anyone but Dorian for my first few weeks.”

“And Nehemia,” Amarie said. “And that Kaltain. Why everyone fawns over those girls, I don’t know. Don’t tell me you’ve joined their admirers.”

No one fawned over Nehemia that Lillian had seen. Everyone here but Kaltain treated her as if she was something _other,_ something less for all she was a princess, and she managed to be fashionable anyway. Nehemia didn’t really need Lillian’s protection from even Amarie, and Kaltain probably didn’t want it, but they were going to get it anyway. Lillian met Amarie’s eyes and raised one brow.

The lady’s smile sharpened into something closer to a sneer, but Lillian didn’t care.

I survived two years in the mines, Lillian hoped her eyes said. I can fight Celaena Sardothien with a staff. What can you do to me?

Amarie blinked. Lillian did not. Finally Amarie looked away.

“Princess Nehemia has been the kindest of everyone,” Lillian told her firmly. “Lady Kaltain too.”

Amarie raised an eyebrow of her own but said nothing else on the matter. Lillian asked her about running Meah, and received a treatise on economics that left her head spinning.

Later, as Chaol escorted her back to her rooms, their arms linked, he said, “Nehemia and Kaltain aren’t your friends.”

Lillian said nothing.

He continued,” Kaltain isn’t _anybody’s_ friend. You don’t have to defend either of them.”

“The only thing I have to do is help Dorian win,” Lillian said, and slipped her arm out of his to walk ahead.

* * *

 

“Teach me how to use these,” Lillian demanded again that night, knives in her hands.

Celaena eyed her.  “I told you-”

“I can’t carry a staff with me all the time,” Lillian interrupted. “I can carry these. Teach me how to use them right.”

“You have your hands and feet,” Celaena said. “A weapon you can’t use properly is a weapon that’s more dangerous to you than to whoever you’re trying to use it on.”

“So _teach me to use them,”_ Lillian snapped for the third time. “Chaol and Dorian expect me to have them now. If I don’t use them they’ll be suspicious.”

Celaena sighed. “Fine.”

“And then I want to learn how to set up traps and alerts and things,” Lillian continued. “I don’t want anyone sneaking up on me anymore. Should I warn Kaltain?”

“Warn her about what?”

“Her room is right below mine,” Lillian said, speaking slowly. “Someone could try to get to me through her rooms, and I don’t know if she knows how to defend herself.”

“Don’t worry about Kaltain.”

“I’d like people to stop telling me not to worry about Kaltain,” Lillian said. “I’m worrying whether you tell me to or not. I don’t want people hurt because of me.”

Celaena did not roll her eyes, but Lillian suspected that she wanted to. “Don’t worry about Kaltain,” Celaena repeated. “I am keeping an eye on her.”

Lillian squinted suspiciously at her.

“Worry more about Nehemia,” Celaena advised. “It’s her the king doesn’t like.”

“Because he’s awful,” Lillian said immediately and without thinking. She covered her mouth, reflexively checking to make sure no one had heard her say anything about their hero-king. She wasn’t even sure she meant it, except obviously she did: she was half convinced that not liking Nehemia was the mark of a terrible human being. Even Kaltain liked Nehemia. Even Celaena seemed to - she called her by her first name and everything.

Why did an assassin call Princess Nehemia Ytger by her name as if she knew her?

She was distracted by the unprecedented sight of Celaena Sardothien throwing back her head and laughing.

Lillian gaped at her. Celaena wiped tears away and said, “Your _face.”_

Lillian decided to press her advantage. “I want to know where all the other competitors’ rooms are too,” she said, while Celaena chuckled. “Not just the princes, I want to know who their assassins are, and their guards.”

Celaena shook her head and drew her own knives. “Fine. We’ll go over it all. Knives first, and then we’ll figure out the rest.”

The stance, when Lillian copied her, wasn’t all that different from the one she used for a staff. The grip was.

“You aren’t going to get much sleep if you keep adding things,” Celaena cautioned.

“I’ve had less,” Lillian retorted, and set her feet.


End file.
